The Girl Who Trod on a Loaf

This remarkable novel immerses us in the lives of two women in a small upstate New York town: Frances Thorn, who waits tables despite her privileged background and raises her twin daughters without even a memory of their father; and Helle Ten Brix, an elderly Danish composer. At the heart of the two women’s friendship is a Hans Christian Andersen tale about a prideful girl (the subject of Helle’s final opera) who is damned for using a precarious loaf of bread, intended as a gift for her parents, as a stepping stone.