Jack Pierce, a down and out Colorado writer, has retreated from society to the sanctuary of the mountains above Leadville. To his astonishment, an old lover, Miranda Talbot, a poet and faith healer from Texas, arrives at his house shortly after the death of his live-in girlfriend and proceeds to inspire him to write a biography about the recently deceased Yale Nobel Prize recipient Theodore Hudson. Reluctant at first, he eventually succumbs to her persuasiveness and her charms and sets off for New Haven, Connecticut on a wild ride with the esoteric Miranda that could be the turning point in his miserable life. There he and Miranda learn about Hudson's past and must wrestle with the moral dilemma this information presents. Bread of Shame is about the beauty of truth when the larger picture is finally glimpsed and made to benefit seeker and savior and all those in between. The novel speaks to what it is to be an artist and a human being in a world where perception is obscured by human need, and knowledge is ambiguous and conflicted. Finally, it is about what it takes to love and write and live and be.