Baker's Dozen

by Kathleen Thompson Norris

Genres: Fiction

307 pages, Hardcover

First published October 12, 1971

About the author

Educated at the University of California, Kathleen married Charles Gilman Norris, brother of the late Benjamin Franklin Norris, Junior, in 1909. She was a prolific author, producing over 80 novels in addition to numerous short stories and articles. Norris was a regular contributor to leading magazines such as Atlantic and Ladies' Home Journal. Her first novel, Lost Sunrise, appeared in 1909 and was immediately popular. By the end of her career her books had sold over ten million copies and made her the highest paid female author of her day.

Reviews

[A.J. · Rating 2 out of 5]

My Review (a-few-spoilers alert!)—This book contains thirteen individual stories within its cover, all published in different years. I gave it two stars because, though there were a couple As, there were more Cs or lower, so I figure it somehow equates to a C overall.

“Second Choice,” pages 9-30
“Second Choice” is the first story in the book. And all I have to say is: Oh, brother. It was as if I were afforded just a fleeting glimpse into an average American family’s life. The Livermores: Otis, Ellen, Margaret (eight), Patsy (three), Mother (Ellen’s mother), and Inga (the maid).
Story Summary—The family’s set to move tomorrow, and you read about it, from Otis’s returning home from work and learning that Patsy was hit on the head by the Fuller boy’s missiling rock, to the whole family sitting down to their last meal at house number one, to waking up and moving to house number two, to (finally) the end of day one at house number two.
Yawn! Though I will admit the ending was a “feel-good” sort because, at the start, Otis and Ellen were focused on the bad in their lives: “I had a bad day at work, and here I come home to find that my daughter’s been beaten up by a bully, and I’m going to have to finish packing…” “I really don’t like this house anymore, but I really don’t like the new one—mainly because I really did like that cute little cottage that we just can’t really afford…” But, by the end of the move-in day, both realize just what blessings they’ve had in their lives and how neither would do anything differently, starting with marrying Cora Hackett (with whom he was smitten before Ellen) or Lew Hungerford (her crush before Otis) or having the son they desperately wanted before they learned Patsy wasn’t going to be Bobby; they know now they’d never trade either daughter for a host of boys! So, as I said, the ending was at least positive.
Grade: C

“No Party,” pages 31-51
“No Party” is the second story in the book. And all I have to say is: Mm…no thanks. Yet another story of a couple’s “day in the life of.” This about Stan and Barbara Stillman. Christmastime. They seem to be deeply in debt, and Babs learns she’s pregnant—and he gets upset. As if it should be news to anyone that sex creates life! You can’t afford a baby? Well, then, don’t have sex.
So, he’s put all this fear and pressure on his wife, which makes me mad—as if he didn’t greatly contribute to both the debt and her condition. Anyhow, it ends well between them (all it takes is a fire and the destruction of just about everything), but, for me, his selfishness in the beginning cinched my negative feelings throughout.
Grade: C

“Prisoner’s Base,” pages 52-74
“Prisoner's Base” is the third story in the book. This was better. It didn’t start off so; I didn’t think I’d like it at all because Dina, the heroine, is married to a skunk by the name of Ford Huddleston, who’s a real mean warden of some Midwest prison. He seems to’ve lied to her about taking in her baby from a previous marriage (she’s widowed), and now that the time’s come for him to make good on his promise—he won’t, says he doesn’t want her attention taken away from him and put on her now-five son, Chester, whom she hasn’t seen in at least three years.
So, of course, I’m wondering when she’s going to poison the louse but then a prison break occurs and who should be standing in her kitchen but her deceased husband, Lin Forrest! Obviously, he didn’t die but somehow ended up in prison (gambling?), and he only just happened to find her again and can’t wait to apologize for the way he used to be (he wasn’t mean, just young and scared and feeling the pressure of providing for a wife and a baby who was sick, while he, too, had taken ill). And, of course, Dina still loves him, and they both love their son—so what’s to be done?
That’s the question, and it has a good ending. Worthy reading.
Grade: A

“Yesterday,” pages 75-99
“Yesterday” is the fourth story in the book. And all I have to say is: What an incredibly stupid story. Another “day in the life of”—this time the Buckminster family, c. the late 1800s, I’d imagine. Victorian era, San Francisco, CA. And, really, there’s no way to summarize it because it happens in the span of four hours. Arnold and Carrie Buckminster, parents of ten, eight girls and two boys. Arnold Jr., is the oldest of all, and turning out to be a spoiled ne’er-do-well. Charlotte and Isabel are the oldest girls who are growing up fast and trying to push the limits of strict parents. In the house also live 12 other people, including the parents. Everyone’s weird, and the ending’s exceedingly so. Forty-year-old spinster, Aunt Belle’s, just admitted she’s been married for three months to a Merchant Marine. And, when the house is quiet, Arnold Jr., returns from his boozing and carousing to Aunt Eliza, who keeps his boozing and carousing a secret as she coddles him.
The end.
As I said: stupid!
Grade: F

“A Break for Eve,” pages 100-140
“A Break for Eve” is the fifth story in the book. And it’s another pathetically stupid story with an awful ending! Nineteen-year-old Eve’s a California rancheress, who’s been on her grandparents’ ranch since she was eight. And she’s hated it, in love with the idea (as most girls are) of making a break and breaking into Hollywood to make it big. Then comes Sandy, who makes the ranch suddenly much more interesting. She falls in love with him, and he, begrudgingly, falls for her. Realizing she means it when she says she no longer wants Hollywood but only him, he tries to leave, but Eve follows him, and he buckles and lets her come. They marry first chance and get to Hollywood where he’s promised her he’d help her “break in.” And then the moment Eve’s dream bursts and Reality enters.
An utterly awful ending. Two thumbs down.
Grade: F-

“Masterpiece,” pages 120-140
“Masterpiece” is the sixth story in the book. And all I have to say is: Yuck! These are probably the dumbest stories ever to fill up paper.
Story Summary—Peter and Isabel meet in Paris after at least 15 years. She’s still married to Tim, who’s become a famous writer and had his books turned into movies. But Isabel was the one who used to want to write and tries her hand at it. She reads her short paragraph and discusses the gist where she wants the rest to go with Peter and Tim, the latter loving it. And then she leaves Tim to hashing it out and tells her son to go “approach Dad now”—so are we to assume he’s gotten some girl pregnant (as in his mother’s story), or is it that he doesn’t want to follow in his famous father’s footsteps? What? I don’t get it. It was very stupid, and I didn’t like Tim at all anyway; he was too egocentric and boorish.
Pass.
Grade: F

“ ’Twas the Night before Christmas,” pages 141-161
“ ’Twas the Night before Christmas” is the seventh story in the book. Okay, this was strange, but I think I like it. It had a sort of “Twilight Zone” weirdness to it.
Story Summary—Catherine Bowditch is an only child to a widower who’s also a very busy doctor in the little town of La Paloma. She’s 24 and has no life—at least not one the married women around her believe will net her a husband, so she’s invited to Hillsborough for the weekend before Christmas, which will culminate on Christmas in a dinner and a dance. Catherine goes (begrudgingly) and hates it—she knows no one and keeps sticking her foot in her mouth. Then comes Christmas Eve. She meets Gregory Hull: tall, handsome (brown hair, brown eyes, brown skin), and rich—and all the girls adore him, but he’s paired with the leader of the pack, Marie Billings. Anyway, at tea on the 24th, Catherine makes his acquaintance for the first time and feels a “connection” to him she doesn’t understand. He first tells her their mothers knew each other and then, within the conversation, he asks her a question (“do you like white kittens?”) to which she obviously gives the wrong answer because, suddenly, he’s completely uninterested in continuing their discussion. She’s disappointed but incapable of dwelling on it because it’s time to ready for the party. Catherine goes up, rests, falls asleep, and then dreams a dream she’s had all her life involving a little Brown Puppy she calls Budge, and she always awakens happy and bubbly with feelings of peace, love, and security. Well, this time’s no different, and she goes to the party giddy and radiant with good cheer.
It’s eleven before Gregory arrives and comes to her, asking if she’ll join him for a walk. She goes and then he calls her “Kit,” a name no one uses—except in her dream! But how can he know of what she dreams? Because he, too, has the same dreams—only instead of a Brown Puppy, he has a white kitten. And, of course, it comes out that he, Gregory, is her Brown Puppy, Budge, and she (yellow hair, light skin, and kittenish eyes) is his white kitten. The “how” and the “why” are part of the unfolding dialogue between them.
As I said: odd but good.
Grade: A

“High Holiday,” pages 162-186
“High Holiday” is the eighth story in the book.
Things that make you go “hmm.” I was bored stiff through all but seven-eighths of it. That last eighth made the story good. Kind of “the journey, though long, made the ending all the sweeter.” The only real problem I had was the couple in the beginning and at the end—same couple, Mrs. Pinckney and her lover, Bob Lippincot. She’s a bitchy society dame who looks down her nose at everyone for one thing or another (not as rich as she or as beautiful or as educated, etc.). But she hates her life (Bob, too, really). The crux of the story, though, was about Martha and her kids, Willie and Sarah. Turns out Martha works for Mrs. Pinckney and hates it (as if anyone could enjoy working for a snob!). It’s her kids’ birthday (born two years apart, to the day), and Martha takes them out for the day—a hot, icky August (19) day in New York. Problem being Martha has a terrible toothache, and it takes the joy out of it (as does her poverty, her husband’s death two years ago, and entrusting her kids to the State to school and board them because she’s too poor and Mrs. Pinckney too afraid they’ll “corrupt” (ironic: morality from an adulteress!) and “pass on” their lowness to her immaculate and pure daughter). Anyway, the kids hate their school/board and want to be with Mama, but there’s no money, and Mama just can’t argue about it because she’s slowly dying of pain (her tooth). The kids want to ask God for a miracle to make it so Mama’s tooth doesn’t hurt and they can all be together again. But Martha’s feeling melancholy in her despair that this is all it’ll ever be, etc., and says not to bother God. Well, Willie argues that and then amid the discussion of whether God answers all prayers and whether her watch stopped and it’s time to get the kids back—Joe Cahill appears. Dr. Cahill, D.D.S.—with an office nearby, a wife dead a year, a daughter who, at Sarah’s age, died (ten years ago), and is a childhood friend of Martha who’d had a crush on her. The crush survived, Joe fixes her tooth, and the kids and he “fall” for each other instantly, which settles it. Martha’s days as the Pinckney maid are over. The end.
Grade: A-

“The Shortest Way Home,” pages 187-207
“The Shortest Way Home” is the ninth story in the book. And all I have to say is: Oh, wow! Finally! One that literally brought tears to my eyes. What a sweet story.
Story Summary—Jacquetta was behind the wheel of a car and got into an accident that claimed the life of her husband and her in-the-womb baby. Now, five weeks later, she’s made startling recovery and, at first, to feed her vanity and make things all better, decides to adopt “a perfect boy,” one who’ll be strong and healthy and without defect—whom she’ll name Hugh Pomeroy, after her deceased husband (who had a strange desire for a “perfect” baby—boy, of course). So she goes to a local orphanage and looks amongst the babies in a “just-browsing” manner, and she stumbles across a sickly, crippled runt of a baby girl named Betty. And Jacquetta Pomeroy falls in love with her and decides to adopt her and give her all the love and opportunities any child could have, especially one entering the world with a lame foot. So Jacquetta tells her family doctor and best friend that, regardless of what either say, she wants Betty and she’s going to have Betty. And then she learns (spoiler alert!) that Betty just so happens already to be hers! No one knew if Betty would live, so no one told Jacquetta the truth, that her baby didn’t die—Jacquetta just assumed so.
It was touchingly sweet.
Grade: A+

“The Heart of a Mouse,” pages 208-231
“The Heart of a Mouse” is the tenth story in the book. And all I have to say is: Another that brought on the tears. It was very good, though it didn’t start off so. I found it a tad boring, but I kept with it hoping Kathleen Norris had another good one as the last couple had been. And she did. This one was about a widow with two kids of her own, two of her deceased sister’s (I think) kids, plus a mother-in-law and a cook who’d been deserted by her husband—all in one small cottage. None of the village women like or understand Mollie Peacock, the widow and heroine; they just enjoy gossiping about her and find her manner of not sparing the rod or spoiling the child to be very “backward.” The only outsider who approves is one 8-year-old boy, Paul Craig, who’s an orphan and just moved to the village’s children’s home after the one he was at was closed down for child abuse. And in his eight years, he’s seen true abuse: not mere spankings for doing wrong (which is what the village biddies freak out about) but whippings and starvation, etc. And Paul adores Mollie. Circumstances put him in her hands, and he falls for her and she him—this, the same Mollie who had come to believe she’d never feel anything again, after the death of her husband and first son; she’d shut down, become numb, just went through the motions. Until Paul—his sweet laugh could make her cry or laugh. And so she decides to ask permission to adopt him, telling him not to get too excited because they didn’t always grant permission to single women. And the ending of how Paul Craig learns he’s become Paul Peacock is, well, sweet.
Grade: A+

“The Mother of Angela Hogan,” pages 232-257
“The Mother of Angela Hogan” is the eleventh story in the book. And all I have to say is: Back to dumb. This one was pointless and just plain inane. Angela’s mother dies, she’s sent to live 13 years at a school/home for orphaned girls, and then is let go at 18. She’s been told all 13 years that the girls there have sketchy pasts and has only one memory of her own mother and that was of her getting bawled out by her father’s (Angela) mother about being a hussy (or whatever; it’s not stated)—so Angela grows up thinking she’ll take after her loose mother and so grows up scared of men (in that she’s afraid to like them because, if she does too much, she’ll be bad as her mother, and, if she marries, she’ll leave as she believes her mother did). So Angela moves in with old family friends and, eventually, the oldest boy, Tom Loughborough, falls for her. She secretly falls for him but is afraid she’ll be as her mother, so she keeps her distance—all the while killing Tom, whose love for her is so deep and strong he can’t function, etc. So, in order to end her son’s torment, Mrs. Loughborough tells Angela about her mother (they knew each other), but, instead of telling her the whole truth, Mrs. L. tells Angela about her Mother (as in the Virgin Mary—they’re all good Catholics in this story, Angela leading the pack in “goodness”) and how good she was and loved and always doing for people, etc. so now Angela thinks her mother’s a saint and can freely give herself to Tom.
As I said: dumb.
Grade: F

“Grand Central Pickup,” pages 258-280
“Grand Central Pickup” is the twelfth story in the book. And all I have to say is: Eh. It was absurd at first, then it got better, and then it ended on a downbeat—so I guess I’d have to say, all in all, it was simply okay. It starts off with “Mary” picking “John” up in Grand Central Station with some such line about being a good girl who, as a good girl, has no real recourse/outlet for true adventure and thought one sure-fire way to inject spice into her life would be to “pick up” a man “simply for dinner” and not exchange names or tell anything personal about each so as to stay incognito—and then, when dinner’s over, they can just go back to their separate lives, all the better/happier for having a new experience, meeting a new person, etc. So that’s what they do: go to dinner and talk and pick the pseudonyms “Mary” and “John” to call each other. However, before dinner’s over, they’ve sort of “taken” to each other and finagle tickets to some such show and then, still “taken” decide that “if, by this time next Tuesday, you still feel the same, let’s return to Grand Central and do it all over again—same rules apply.” Well, they do feel the same and meet and do it all over again, rules still in effect. And then, as the story progresses, a romance of sorts builds and then “John” lets the truth of who he is slip, to “Mary’s” delight because she’s known all along who he really is and about his whole story. A certain amount of drama ensues to separate them. And then, at the end, she hates herself for the trick she played on him—only she learns he played one on her, too, so everything’s all right in the end. And it does end—without even telling us what their real names are (unless, of course, in “John’s” spilling of “his story,” the name he gives her (Roger) is really the truth—don’t know for sure).
Grade: C

“Sinners,” pages 281-303
“Sinners” is the thirteenth and final story in the book. And all I have to say is: Very good. Another story that brought on the tears.
Story Summary—Emma, at 13, lied about seeing Lucas, then 22, kill a man because she wanted to see her name in the papers the way a girl she was jealous of had gotten hers—but she began to realize the lie she told was costing a man his life, only she was too scared to say anything, and he got 16 years. Fast-forward some 40 years later and Emma’s tracked Lucas down at a State-run seniors’ home. So she offers first an apology (deeply heartfelt) and a way out of institutionalized living. He forgives her and accepts and moves to her Santa Clara Valley, California, farm. And it’s here that Lucas Rippey proves himself a saint in order to relieve a 50+ woman of the pain, guilt, and shame she’s harbored since she was 13. (See, Emma, though Lucas has forgiven her, can’t seem to forget what she’d done as a kid and the guilt eats her up inside—her whole life plagued by her inner self-hate, even after Lucas tells her she’s not to blame herself for something she did as a kid because “lots of people do things as kids they end up regretting when adults” (how true, how true). Still, Emma can’t let it go, and Lucas feels bad, seeing her inner turmoil day in and out. So he does the only thing he can think of to do to help her get over it. No spoiler here. It’s worth the read to find out.)
It truly is a feel-good story.
Grade A+

[Melinda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fives stars for the last story in the book "Sinners". Emma has been searching for Lucas for forty years to right a wrong she had done. She finds that he does not hold her to blame for the hardship in his life that she caused. She tries to compensate for the wrong by making the last years of his life his happiest. But while he is happy and content, she still suffers since she is unable to let go of her guilt. He finds a way in the end to release her from the guilt. I read this on openlibrary.com