gilda_elise

A heartrending story about a young mother’s fight to keep her daughter, and the winds of fortune that tear them apart by the New York Times bestselling author of The Nature of Fragile Things and The Last Year of the War.

California, 1938—When she loses her parents in an accident, sixteen-year-old Rosanne is taken in by the owners of the vineyard where she has lived her whole life as the vinedresser’s daughter. She moves into Celine and Truman Calvert’s spacious house with a secret, however—Rosie sees colors when she hears sound. She promised her mother she’d never reveal her little-understood ability to anyone, but the weight of her isolation and grief prove too much for her. Driven by her loneliness she not only breaks the vow to her mother, but in a desperate moment lets down her guard and ends up pregnant. Banished by the Calverts, Rosanne believes she is bound for a home for unwed mothers, and having lost her family she treasures her pregnancy as the chance for a future one. But she soon finds out she is not going to a home of any kind, but to a place far worse than anything she could have imagined.

Austria, 1947—After witnessing firsthand Adolf Hitler’s brutal pursuit of hereditary purity—especially with regard to “different children”—Helen Calvert, Truman's sister, is ready to return to America for good. But when she arrives at her brother’s peaceful vineyard after decades working abroad, she is shocked to learn what really happened nine years earlier to the vinedresser’s daughter, a girl whom Helen had long ago befriended. In her determination to find Rosanne, Helen discovers that while the war had been won in Europe, there are still terrifying battles to be fought at home.

The book is divided into two stories, each woman’s story told separately. I think written chronologically would have worked better, because we learn what will happen in the second story in the first story, thereby giving away part of its plot.

While both women’s stories are steeped in tragedy, I found Helen Calvert’s story to be more so, as well as more interesting. It’s her tragedy, but an entire nation’s as well. While some of her decisions are foolhardy, she at least makes decisions and acts on them.

Unfortunately, too often Rosanne’s story relies too much on the girl being overly passive. She seems unwilling to make any decision, rather waiting for things to happen to her. Which they do, with ridiculous frequency. If something can go wrong, it will go wrong. The reader can’t help but see it coming.