Bread On Arrival

Temple's hardcover debut features energetic, meant-to-be-lovable Heaven Lee, the five-times-married mother of 22-year-old Iris; girlfriend of medical resident Hank; and owner of Cafƒ Heaven in Kansas City, Missouri. Pauline, the restaurant's baker, is a board member of ARTOS, a national bread-baking group hosting a convention in Kansas City and environs. The group has plans to visit experimental farms growing new wheat varieties, and also to stop in at the plant of the very commercial, much-scorned BIG BREAD, which has been funding the cloning research of General Irwin Mills. During the ARTOS visit to BIG BREAD, said General falls to his death from atop a silo--perhaps to the satisfaction of scientist Walter Jinks, whose ideas on feeding the world are directly opposed to those of Mills. Yet another track is that of Mennonite Ernest Powell, whose mission is to put a bread-making machine into every kitchen, using traditional red turkey with wheat flour, of course. The convention's last days bring death to a world-famous baker and a kind of mass spaciness to the participants. It takes a hairbreadth escape from her own demise for Heaven to get to the bottom of it all. An imaginative if off-the-wall plot, a hep heroine, and a slew of clip-worthy recipes help to offset the never-ending lectures on enzymes, glutens, wheats, ryes, and more. Heaven's further adventures, preferably breadless, are anticipated.