Ester thought her life would be different. She was going to be a poet in the city, not a baker's apprentice in a sleepy rural town where potholes and sheep are the only cause of traffic.

A college dropout evicted by her hyper critical mother, Ester finds herself at the mercy of kind strangers and a foul tempered baker. Ester is the new apprentice at The Moriah Bread Company, in the middle of a rural, upstate New York town on a busy trucking route. Paid in pastries, lodging, and criticism, Ester begins to pick up the pieces, one recipe at a time and rekindles the dream she has of being more.

Flour & Salt takes us through four seasons of family, fallibility, and flakey pastry. It is a story of self discovery after the devastation of a first dream lost and the inevitable course correction that fate demands.

Florence Virginia Stephenson is a designer & writer. Raised in the rural Northeast Kingdom, taught in the vibrant city of Chicago and toasted on the warm beaches of San Diego, she now resides on a floating home in the Pacific Northwest with aggressively friendly ducks and her big-hearted engineer. Flour & Salt is her debut novel.