"The Baker's Daughter" by D.P. Cornelius

Libby Mittendorf has had to postpone her dreams for university. It’s World war II, and her parents need her help in their Berlin bakery. As the war progresses, keeping the business afloat and the family safe is getting more difficult. Bakery supplies are hard to find, a local Nazi police officer likes to visit, Allied bombing raids are becoming more common, and then there’s Marek. 

To help meet expenses, Liddy’s father takes a job as a prison guard in Berlin. To help with the baking, he hires the teenaged Marek, who’s had training at a monastery in Poland. The boy also speaks good German. He has fake identity papers; he fled Warsaw after his parents were arrested and taken away. Marek’s mother is Jewish, which makes Marek’s existence extremely problematic in Nazi Berlin. The boy is also helping print materials for the German resistance to Hitler.

 

Liddy’s father is helping a prisoner smuggle letters to his fiancée and family. He’s also reading the letters himself – and using them to teach his family. The prisoner is a pastor named Dietrich Bonhoeffer. The priest who managed the monastery where Marek worked is Father Maximilian Kolbe, famous for sacrificing himself in a concentration camp to save another prisoner. And Marek’s mother will find herself at the notorious Ravensbruck Camp for women, where she meets Betsy and Corrie ten Boom. 

 

D.P. Cornelius

The Baker’s Daughter by D.P. Cornelius, aimed at the teen /young adult audience, is the story of a Christian family’s resistance to Nazi tyranny in spite of how increasingly precarious their lives become. Danger exists on the streets and in their shop, and the possibility of being killed in a bombing raid becomes more and more real. Will Marek be discovered? Will Liddy’s father be found smuggling letters? Will they survive the next air raid?

 

In addition to The Baker’s Daughter, Cornelius is the author of the novels Freedom’s Call, Da Vinci’s Disciples, and Good News – I Failed. He received the Illumination Silver Award for Y.A. Fiction for The Baker's Daughter and 2017 Moonbeam Children's Silver Award for Y.A. Fiction-Religion for Da Vinci's Disciples. A graduate of Cornell University, he spent his professional career working for Target, Amex, and #M, in addition to his father’s business. He lives in the Twin Cities, Minnesota, area. 

 

The Baker’s Daughter shows that heroism isn’t only found on the battlefield but also in the day-to-day activities of a family determined to help others. 

Saturday Good Reads

I’ve read a number of good posts on writing in the past week – from how to generate ideas, resources for writers and poets, writers for writers to read, telling a respected and perhaps beloved teacher goodbye, and what we can learn from penmanship (remember when they used to teach that in schools?).

Kronos Media recently assembled video footage from a number of sources of what Berlin looked like in July, 1945, two months after the end of World War II in Europe. Included are scenes of the “rubble women” (who worked to clear bombed sites), the area around Hitler’s bunker and the ditch where his dead body was burned, the Mosaic Hall of Hitler’s Chancellery (painted by Anselm Kiefer), and a city trying to come to grips with a very different world. The video is below.

The eighth Planned Parenthood video has been released by the Center for Medical Progress, and if you’ve ever doubted that abortion has become a big business in the United States, then watch the video. Executives with StemExpress, the company buying organs of aborted babies from Planned Parenthood, talks about how important it is that Planned Parenthood profit, too. And in something straight out of George Orwell’s 1984, one of the executives has the title of procurement manager.

In that regard, Joe Carter and Time Challies remind us that we don’t need to take the words of Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, out of context, and there is a lot of that happening on social media. The things she said and believed are damning enough in context.

Writing

How to Generate Ideas for Writing - @annkroeker http://annkroeker.com/2015/08/19/how-to-generate-ideas-for-writing/

Resources for Poets and Writers – Mary Sayler at The Poetry Editor.

We are slaves to the printed word, but only handwriting conveys real beauty – Simon Jenkins at The Guardian (Hat tip: J of India).

What came of the things we once believed? – Travis Thrasher.

The Little Spec-Fic Conference That Could – Mike Duran at Novel Rocket.

Five Questions with Author Karen Swallow Prior – Boundless.org (Hat top: Mike Duran and Maureen Doallas).

Writing to Heal the Hole-Hearted – Mick Silva.

A Goodbye of Sorts – Jake Lee at Very Much Later.

Writers to Read: 9 Names That Belong on Your Bookshelf – Mary H. Sayler at In a Christian Writer’s Life.

Poetry

‘Only His Hands, Quiet On The Sheet’ - 3 poems by Wendell Berry via @roddreher at @amconmag http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/wendell-berry-dying-ray-dreher/

Sandra Duguid –D.S. Martin at Kingdom Poets.

The Torrentials – Brendan MacOdrum at Oran’s Well.

Inside Ship Windows – Maureen Doallas at Writing Without Paper.

Art and Photography

Artist Watch: Noel Paine – Maureen Doallas at Escape into Life. http://www.escapeintolife.com/painting/noel-paine/

Hummingbirds – Tim Good at Photography by Tiwago.

The Katrina Decade – David Spielman at Oxford American.

November Dusk and New Mexico Watercolors – Randall David Tipton at Painter’s Process.

Work

How to put an end to stupid job interviews – Nick Corcodilos at PBS (Hat tip: Janet Young).

Commerce – Jack Baumgartner at The School of the Transfer of Energy.

Faith

A letter for my daughter who is all growed up – Troy Cady at T(r)oy Marbles.

That was a Man – Rod Dreher at American Conservative.

Planned Parenthood

The 8^th Video from the Center for Medical Progress – Justin Taylor at The Gospel Colation.

9 Things You Should Know About Margaret Sanger – Joe Carter at The Gospel Coalition.

The Truth About Margaret Sanger – Tim Challies at Informing the Reforming.

Witches Can Be Right, Giants Can Be Good – Jody Lee Collins at Three Way Light.

Berlin – July 1945 – Kronos Media

Top photograph by Francisco Faris Jr. via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.