The Baker's Secret by Stephen P. Kiernan

This WWII survival story centers around 22 year old Emma.  She bakes bread in a small village in Normandy France.  The people are suffering from both from physical brutality and hunger during the German occupation.  She is ordered to bake 12 loaves of bread daily for the Nazi occupiers.  Her acts of resistance begin by adding straw to the flour she is given which allows her to make 14 loaves.  Those two extra secret loaves will not only feed her neighbors but allow her to set up an informal bartering system that allows many of the village needs to be met. Still there is more fear then hope in her daily existence - a sense that no one really cares what happens to the people of France.  There are some beautifully written passages in this story although it often seems to lack the weight of internal struggle found in similar books like The Nightingale .  Still it is well worth the read.