I’ve read most of Juliet Blackwell’s mysteries, and all of her novels. However, The Vineyards of Champagne, a story of grief and love, history and vineyards, is a book with a remarkable, moving voice. Blackwell has dug into her own heart to reveal a painful story of loss and resilience.

In 1914, a wealthy Australian widow, Doris Whittaker, writes her first letter to a young solder from Reims, France. 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 1916, a young woman named Lucie Marechal tells of the shelling of Reims by the Germans. By day, women, and children, the elderly and infirm hide in the caves under the Champagne region of France.  There they shelter, have school, tend the sick and injured, drink champagne. 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.

On a flight from California to France, Rosalyn Acosta, a widow and wine rep, meets an Australian, Emma Kinsley. Emma has a broken leg, so she needs help when she drops an armload of papers all over the plane. They’re letters between Emma’s great-grandmother, Doris Whittaker, and a French soldier from Reims. Emma’s on her way to Reims to check on her vineyards, but also to search for additional letters and the answer to a mystery. What happened to Emile Paul Legrand? Rosalyn is struggling with grief over the death of her husband, a grief that has left her bereft and struggling to go on with her life. But, her boss pushed her to go to France, to represent their small company in the Champagne region. She has little interest in work. But, while Emma sleeps on the flight, Rosalyn finds the letters distract her.

Rosalyn can’t sleep when she arrives in Reims, but she’s had trouble sleeping ever since Dash died. She remembers her early encounters with him, their life together, and his promise they would always have laughter. But, for her, the laughter died when he did. And, her vivid world turned colorless. But, staying in Reims, learning the history of the Champagne region, and the widows who kept the industry alive, brings her to life a little. It’s the research into those letters, though, that sparks something more in her. She wants to know how the people in those letters found the strength to continue to live.

Blackwell’s The Vineyards of Champagne really needs to be read to come alive. A summary does not do justice to the people in the book, the living ones or the ones from the letters of history. It doesn’t do justice to Rosalyn’s grief, her “Grief brain”, her feelings of loneliness when she’s with people, her need to be alone. And, a summary can’t do justice to the emotion in this book, the feelings of loss, of struggle. Or, the grief that makes one understand the tragedy of war. “If people knew what it felt like to lose a loved one, if they truly understood the agony, the unfathomable waste of a life cut short, they wouldn’t be able to support the war. It would be, quite simple, unbearable.”

“One foot in front of another.” Read The Vineyards of Champagne for a moving story of loss, the loss of an entire generation to war and an entirely different personal loss. But, somewhere in that beautifully written story of grief and loss, there’s also a glimpse of hope, and a story of resilience. There’s a voice with a broken heart in this book. But, it’s a voice moving ahead “One foot in front of another.”

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Juliet Blackwell’s website is www.JulietBlackwell.net

The Vineyards of Champagne by Juliet Blackwell. Berkley, 2020. ISBN 9780451490650 (paperback), 399p.

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FTC Full Disclosure – I received the book from the publisher, in hopes I would review it.

PERSONAL NOTE: This is the second book I’ve read in two days with descriptions of a personal library fit for my favorite fairy tale, “Beauty and the Beast”. So, I’m surrendering. I’m not reviewing the other book for a couple weeks, and I described that library. Here’s the description of a family library in The Vineyards of Champagne.  “The library was something out of her childhood fantasies. Two stories tall, complete with a spiral staircase in one corner that led to a catwalk that encircled the room. Floor-to-ceiling shelves were lined with books, some with old leather bindings, others with glossy new covers.” This is the library of dreams from the Disney version of “Beauty and the Beast”. How many of us have loved that movie, and the Beast, because of that library?