A heartrending story about a young mother's fight to keep her
daughter, and the winds of fortune that tear them apart by the USA
Today 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.
