The Girl Who Trod on a Loaf

Back in print, an astonishing novel of art, obsession, and the secrets kept by two very different women In Kathryn Davis’s second novel, Frances Thorn, waitress and single parent of twins, finds herself transformed by the dazzling magnetism of Helle Ten Brix, an elderly Danish composer of operas. At the heart of what binds them is “The Girl Who Trod on a Loaf,” the Hans Christian Andersen tale of a prideful girl who, in order to spare her new shoes, uses a loaf of bread, intended as a gift for h