On a flight from California to France, Rosalyn Acosta, a widow and wine rep, meets an Australian, Emma Kinsley. Lucie’s story is one of a region’s resilience as the women still work to bring in the grapes, to make a Victory Vintage in the hopes that each year will mean the end of the war. There they shelter, have school, tend the sick and injured, drink champagne. By day, women, and children, the elderly and infirm hide in the caves under the Champagne region of France. In 1916, a young woman named Lucie Marechal tells of the shelling of Reims by the Germans. She and Emile Paul Legrand correspond as he tells his marraine de guerre, his “war godmother”, the story of the ugly, brutal life in the trenches during World War I. In 1914, a wealthy Australian widow, Doris Whittaker, writes her first letter to a young solder from Reims, France. Blackwell has dug into her own heart to reveal a painful story of loss and resilience. However, The Vineyards of Champagne, a story of grief and love, history and vineyards, is a book with a remarkable, moving voice. I’ve read most of Juliet Blackwell’s mysteries, and all of her novels.
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