CHARACTER
The Storyteller by Jodi Picoult

Mary DeAngelis

Mary DeAngelis

Quick Facts

  • Role: Owner of Our Daily Bread; former nun; best friend, boss, and moral compass to Sage Singer
  • First appearance: In the present-day bakery scenes at Our Daily Bread
  • Key relationships: Sage Singer; Adam; Josef Weber
  • Core themes: Faith-in-action and the limits of perception within the nature of good and evil

Who They Are

Bold, tender, and unshakeably moral, Mary DeAngelis leaves the convent not to abandon faith but to practice it in flour and friendship. Pink-haired and Harley-riding, she turns a bakery into sanctuary, giving Sage work, privacy, and a place to heal. As a spiritual guide, she mixes compassion with challenge: she comforts Sage’s pain yet refuses to bless choices that harm her. Mary’s instinct to see the best in people—especially community saint Josef—becomes the pressure point of her character, revealing how goodness can be both a vocation and a vulnerability.

Personality & Traits

Mary’s personality fuses an ecstatic spirituality with practical love. She reads the world for signs—sometimes literally in bread—and then acts on them in ways that nurture her community. Her moral clarity can feel uncompromising, but it springs from care, not condemnation.

  • Spiritual and intuitive
    • Sees “visions” with “staggering regularity” that guide real decisions (e.g., launching the “HeBrews” coffee bar).
    • Receives the “Jesus Loaf” as a true miracle meant to pull Sage toward hope rather than despair.
  • Loyal and supportive
    • Hires Sage without references and without prying into the scar on her face: “I’m guessing when you want to tell me about that, you will.”
    • Quietly marks grief with action, donating bakery profits to Hadassah on the anniversary of Sage’s mother’s death.
  • Moral and principled
    • A “recovering nun” whose ethics remain intact: she quotes “Thou shalt not commit adultery” and warns that violating it makes you an outcast.
    • Calls Adam “Satan,” pairing humor with a serious plea for Sage to protect herself from harm.
  • Eccentric and energetic
    • “More energy than ordinary mortals,” making “Tinker Bell look like a sloth.”
    • Paints ceiling murals, rides a Harley, and does “sweaty, machete-hacking” gardening for fun.
  • Trusting but naïve
    • Praises Josef as “as close as you can get to being canonized while you’re still alive,” revealing how public persona can obscure truth and underscoring the novel’s concern with Identity and Reinvention.

Character Journey

Mary’s arc is not about transformation so much as trial. She begins as Sage’s harbor—employer, protector, and friend whose bakery offers structure and solace. Her first rupture with Sage comes over Adam: Mary’s conscience demands she speak, even at the cost of harmony. The deeper test arrives with Josef. Mary’s refusal to accept Sage’s revelation exposes the blind spots in her generous worldview; she believes what a lifetime of kindness has taught her to see. Yet when Sage is hurt in a car accident, Mary drops everything to care for her, proving that steadfast love can outlast disagreement. By the end, Mary remains herself—faith-filled, fierce, imperfect—her goodness challenged by evil’s camouflage but not erased by it.

Key Relationships

  • Sage Singer
    • Mary is a makeshift mother—protective but willing to lovingly oppose Sage when it matters. She creates a workplace that respects Sage’s isolation and dignity while pushing her to confront choices that deepen her pain. Their bond anchors the present-day story, and Mary’s immediate care after the accident reaffirms that moral friction never cancels love.
  • Adam
    • To Mary, the affair is a wound disguised as comfort. Her barbed nickname “Satan” is comic, but her point is serious: adultery isolates and corrodes. By forcing the issue, Mary becomes the rare friend who risks closeness to rescue someone from self-betrayal.
  • Josef Weber
    • Mary venerates Josef as Westerbrook’s gentle patriarch, a belief that shows how thoroughly he has stage-managed his identity. Her disbelief when Sage speaks the truth mirrors the community’s collective blindness—proof that evil often hides in ordinary light.

Defining Moments

Mary shapes the novel through small acts of courage and conviction that ripple outward.

  • Hiring Sage
    • What happens: Mary brings Sage into the bakery without references and without pressing about the scar.
    • Why it matters: Establishes the bakery as sanctuary and Mary as the rare adult who sees beyond damage to dignity.
  • The “Jesus Loaf”
    • What happens: A face appears in a loaf; Mary treats it as a miracle aimed at Sage’s salvation.
    • Why it matters: Clarifies the clash between Mary’s faith and Sage’s skepticism, and shows how Mary translates belief into concrete hope.
  • Confronting Sage about Adam
    • What happens: Mary recounts a violent dream and quotes the commandment against adultery; she refuses to bless the affair.
    • Why it matters: Introduces moral conflict into their friendship and prods Sage toward self-scrutiny and guilt and atonement.
  • Dismissing the accusations against Josef
    • What happens: Mary rejects Sage’s claim that Josef is a Nazi.
    • Why it matters: Exposes the danger of trusting appearances and the ease with which evil is domesticated in communities.
  • Caring for Sage after the accident
    • What happens: Mary rushes to the hospital and insists on tending to Sage.
    • Why it matters: Proves that love outlasts disagreement; Mary’s loyalty is a promise kept under pressure.

Essential Quotes

“I’m guessing when you want to tell me about that, you will.”

This line defines Mary’s respect for boundaries. She offers presence without coercion, creating the conditions under which trust can grow—and healing can begin.

“By the way, Satan called,” she says.
“Let me guess. He wants a special-order birthday cake for Joseph Kony?”
“By Satan,” Mary says, as if I haven’t spoken, “I mean Adam.”

Mary’s gallows humor disarms while it diagnoses. The joke lands because it is edged with love and urgency; she refuses to prettify what is hurting Sage.

“Thou shalt not commit adultery. You can’t get any more clear than that directive. And if you do, bad things happen. You get stoned by your neighbors. You become an outcast.”

Here Mary speaks as a moral realist. She isn’t shaming; she is naming the social and spiritual fallout of choices that isolate people from their communities and from themselves.

“That doesn’t mean He doesn’t believe in you.”

Mary reframes faith as reciprocity: even when someone struggles to believe in God, their worth remains held by something larger. It’s a theology of dignity tailored to Sage’s self-doubt.

“You’re not a bad person, Sage.”
I want to believe her. I want to believe her, so much. “Then I guess sometimes good people do bad things,” I say, and I pull away from her.

This exchange captures Mary’s refusal to collapse a person into a mistake. It also marks the tension point of their friendship: Mary’s belief in goodness meets Sage’s fear that her actions define her.