1. The dictionary defines apprentice as one who learns by practical experience, a beginner, a learner. The word has as its root the Latin verb apprehendere, meaning to grasp or seize. How does this relate to the story and to whom does it apply?

2. Maggie is both abrasive and pathetic. How does she affect the other women at the bakery? What makes her different from Tyler, who can also be abrasive and pathetic?

3. Mac finds an escape in music. What do some of the other characters use to block unpleasant realities?

4. Wyn takes a kind of perverse pride in being different from her mother. But do they share any traits? Are their any parallels in their lives?

5. Wyn likes to believe that the crossed wires in her relationship with Mac are all due to his inability to communicate, but are there times when she is less than forthcoming about her thoughts or feelings? How has a disastrous first marriage shaped her attitudes and perceptions?

6. As one thing after another goes wrong for Mac, he resurrects his old dream of escaping to Alaska. How would the story's outcome have been different if he'd gotten there?

7. The people that he meets in Beaverton, Y.T., are an odd collection of souls who all seem to have secrets in their past. How do they impact his struggle to come to terms with his own history?

8. In her senior class, Tyler would have been voted most likely to ... ?

9. Wyn isn't particularly family oriented. What is it about Tyler that gets to her?

10. Two themes of The Baker's Apprentice -- bread as a metaphor for life and reconciliation with the past -- were also dealt with in Bread Alone. Compare the ways that these themes (or others) play out in both books.