At the heart of One Alpen Day by Michele Davenport-Dutton is a meeting that feels both improbable and inevitable, drawing together two lives shaped by disappointment, responsibility, and the quiet wish that something gentler might still be possible.
Angela Sutton is rebuilding her life after divorce and repeated pregnancy losses have left her uncertain about her future. Returning to assist her aunt in running the family bakery offers structure, but not answers. Her world shifts when Mason Glade, a well-known Hollywood actor, arrives unexpectedly.
Mason is seeking escape from the public scrutiny surrounding his troubled marriage to Camila, whose alcoholism has dominated headlines and disrupted their family life. With Camila entering rehabilitation, Mason travels with his two children and their nanny, hoping to create distance from chaos and give his children stability. As Angela and Mason spend time together, his children quickly grow attached to her, and Mason begins to see the kind of partner and parent he has long wanted. Torn between giving his marriage one last chance and pursuing a future with Angela, Mason faces a decision that could change all their lives.
Excerpt
Angela moved back to Grainau last year after Uncle Karl died from a massive heart attack at the age of seventy-six, leaving Aunt Terese to tend to their forty-year-old bakery alone. Around the same time, Angela had gone through a bitter divorce from her husband, Nick Sutton Jr. after three years of marriage. He had carried on his father’s legacy as a business mogul in L.A. Nick Jr. was in the Garmisch/Grainau area for business and it was there he met Angela at the bakery four years ago. He had swept her off her feet and dragged her to L.A where they were married a few short months later.
The Alpen Bakery, as named by Aunt Terese and Uncle Karl, carried an assortment of breads, rolls, sheet cakes and pastries. Bread is to Germans what cheese is to the French. There are more than four hundred types of bread in Germany. And, a good bakery such as Angela's aunt and uncle's, stocked at least ten to twenty kinds of breads, ten kinds of rolls and an assorted variety of sheet cakes and various pastries, including Aunt Terese's delectable Apple Strudel. Plus, it was said by locals that they made the best cappuccino in town.
Angela was cleaning and dusting all the pictures and paintings displayed in the bakery, over the empty tables when she heard Aunt Terese yell.
“Oh, dear! Somebody left their wallet on the counter!” She looked inside to see if she could find identification. She peered sideways at Angela and batted her eyelashes. “Mason Glade,” she said. Angela's stomach turned in knots. Just hearing his name made her break out in goosebumps.
“He'll be back soon enough,” and with that, Aunt Terese closed the wallet. “He won’t get far without his wallet,” she quipped enthusiastically.
Angela went back to spritzing glass cleaner on the glass covering the Neuschwanstein picture which had smudges all over from people, mainly kids, touching it. It's King Ludwig's most beautiful and prized castle. The rest of the walls displayed photos of Garmisch-Partenkirchen and the ski jump, where the 1936 Winter Olympics were held. Both Aunt Terese and Uncle Karl's parents attended, as it was a huge event. Uncle Karl was just a baby at the time. Next to the Olympic pictures were framed news articles and interviews from that event.
After she dusted the painting of the Zugspitze, Germany's tallest and most glorious mountain, which has her town of Grainau at its base, she went back into the kitchen and washed her hands.
Aunt Terese saw Mason walking outside the front window and quickly shouted, “There he is, Angela!”
Mason opened the door and walked up to the counter. “Hello, excuse me, but I believe I left my wallet here, or I'm really hoping it's here.” Aunt Terese picked it up from behind the counter and handed it to him. Mason was grateful he didn't lose it. “Oh, you don't know how scared I was, thinking I had lost it. Thank you so much,” he said, a nervous relief in his tone. At that moment, Angela walked out from the back and Mason said, “Wait, aren't you Angela?” He pointed over to the rear corner where he remembered seeing her choking.
Angela’s insides did a cartwheel. She couldn’t believe he remembered her name from when Aunt Terese shouted it earlier, asking if she was okay.
Angela cleared her throat. “Yes, Hi, I'm Angela.” She reached out her hand and Mason shook it.
“Hello Angela. It's very nice to meet you. I'm Mason, by the way. You work here?”
Her hands were clammy and sweaty from her nerves. “Yes, this is my Aunt Terese and Uncle Karl's bakery. They've owned it for forty years now.”
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