“Fished from the river as an infant and raised by a roving band of street urchins who call themselves the Crowns, eight-year-old Duck keeps her head down and he mouth shut. It’s a rollicking life, always thieving, always on the run—until the ragtag Crowns infiltrate an abandoned cathedral in the the city of Odierne and decide to set down roots.”

Now the leader of the Crowns, the fearless Gnat, wants Duck to apprentice with the local baker, Master Griselde, and use her position of trust to steal both bread and coin for the Crowns. As Griselde becomes a friend and a mentor, even getting a tutor to teach Duck to read, the choices become more and more difficult for Duck. Will she remain loyal to the Crowns, the only family she’s ever known, or will she become someone new, a respectable and honest apprentice baker? Can she start a new life, or will the old one pull her back into the gang?

I really enjoyed this story and felt as if it had a lot say about loyalty and forgiveness and the possibility of change. However, in some chapters that alternate with the ones that tell Duck’s story, the voice and narrative are that of a frustrated gargoyle who lives on the roof of the unfinished cathedral, unable to fulfill his destiny of being a rescuer and a protector. The stories do intertwine and come together in the end, but I never cared or wanted to read about the gargoyles. And I don’t think I can put the book in my library, even though it’s a good story, because the chapters told from the viewpoint of the gargoyles portray them as profane and prone to insults and salacious gossip. Also the gargoyles are just ugly, mean, and sad. I wish Ms. Eagar had left out the gargoyle chapters.I sort of get what she was going for–a parallel story of identity and redemption–but it just didn’t work.

Lindsay Eagar also wrote Race to the Bottom of the Sea, which I added to my list of 50 Best Middle Grade Novels of the Twenty-first Century. She’s a good writer, but The Patron Thief of Bread could have done without the gargoyles or with better gargoyles or something.