A Best Historical Fiction of Spring Pick by Amazon, PopSugar, AARP, and BookBub!
A heartrending story about a young motherâs fight to keep her daughter, and the terrible injustice that tears them apart, by the USA Today bestselling author of The Nature of Fragile Things and The Last Year of the War.
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California, 1938âWhen 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 vinedresserâs daughter. She moves into Celine and Truman Calvertâs spacious house with a secret, howeverâRosie sees colors when she hears sound. She promised her mother sheâd 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. But she soon finds out she is not going to a home of any kind, but to a place that seeks to forcibly take her baby â and the chance for any future babies â from her.
Austria, 1947âAfter witnessing firsthand Adolf Hitlerâs brutal pursuit of hereditary purityâespecially with regard to âdifferent childrenââHelen Calvert, Trumanâs sister, is ready to return to America for good. But when she arrives at her brotherâs peaceful vineyard after decades working abroad, she is shocked to learn what really happened nine years earlier to the vinedresserâs daughter, a girl whom Helen had long ago befriended. In her determination to find Rosanne, Helen discovers a shocking American eugenics programâand learns that that while the war had been won in Europe, there are still terrifying battles to be fought at home.