The Girl Who Trod On A Loaf: A Novel

A young woman in flight from her past, and an old woman whose secrets are contained in the grave--with this configuration, Davis begins a novel of true bravura about opera, adultery, and murder.

For the first time in paperback: two of the extraordinary novels that have established Kathryn Davis as one of the most original and imaginative American novelists at work today. THE GIRL WHO TROD ON A LOAF immerses us in the lives of two women in a small upstate New York town--a single mother of twin daughters who waits tables (despite her privileged background) and the elderly Danish composer whom she befriends. At the heart of their peculiar friendship is a Hans Christian Andersen tale (the subject of the composer's final opera) about a prideful girl who is damned for using a loaf of bread, intended as a gift for her parents, as a stepping stone.