The French Winemaker's Daughter by Loretta Ellsworth

 

Publisher: HarperCollins 

On Sale Date: December 10, 2024

Pages: 288

I reviewed a digital review copy from the publisher.

The gripping and moving story of The French Winemaker's Daughter starts in a little village in the French countryside in 1942.  We meet seven year old  Martine and her father, who is a winemaker and has a large vineyard .Her father is hiding Martine in an armoire, together with a bottle of wine with a note on it, the bottle of expensive wine she has been instructed to look after if something happened to her father. The nazi's come and she hears hem take her father away with them. and when she thinks the coast is clear, comes out of her hiding place, looking for the assistant of her father to help her, as she has no clue what to do now, she doesn't find him and runs to the neighbours for help. She soon finds herself alone boarding on a train to Paris, where her aunt lives. But when she arrives there, she finds out her aunt is also taken away already by the Nazi's. Not knowing what to do, she roams the streets alone and fall asleep in front of hotel Drouot, where she is found by the kind  nun Sister Ada, who takes her to the abbey in a little village outside of Paris and takes care of her together with the other nuns. Not knowing the truth that Ada is also hiding in the abbey just like her and is also part of the resistance..

The book travels back and forth between 1942 in the past, and 1990, where we meet  the American Charlotte, who is a commercial airline pilot and who plans to buy her fathers vineyards back in California.  Hotel Drouot  in Paris is now an auction house and together with her boyfriend Henri, she visits an auction, where they bid on a box of wine bottles which where saved from the Nazi's who stole it. Not knowing that it is a valuable bottle, Henri gives Charlotte a bottle of wine from the box, as he think it is a cheap bottle of wine. When Charlotte studies the bottle, she finds a note sticking to it underneath its brand label and goes on a search to find the rightfull owner of the bottle, the bottle that was once given to Martine by her father..

It is not very often that I start reading a book, and find it to be so good that I finish reading it in a little more than a day. This was truly the case for this beautiful book. The story truly grips you in from the first page on till the last page, as this story is so beautiful, gripping, moving and thrilling. It just has everything in it that makes a book perfect. The storyline is just perfect, and so are the characters, they where all potrayed realistic and the moving between the past and more present time was done very well by the author. The relationship between Martine and Sister Ada was so moving, as she took such great care of Martine amid great danger because of the Nazi's that also raid the abbey. These scenes where so heartbreaking. But in the end, there was a good future for Martine and Ada and that was just a good wrap up of their story, and how Charlotte could gibe back the bottle of wine to Martine later in live was just beautiful and very moving. This is truly a book that they should turn into a movie.

This book was one of the most perfect books I have read, and I highly recommend  reading it!