A Rose For Every Month
-
- £1.99
-
- £1.99
Publisher Description
James Rushton dominated both his thriving wine business and large family with all the style of an old autocrat.It was part of his plans that Jane, his only daughter - already thirty-one and likely to become a spinster if she wasn't careful - should marry her cousin William, not a love-match exactly, but highly convenient for the family.
But Jane, slight, plain, quiet, wanted more than William's obedient acquiescence, for she had loved her careless handsome cousin for a long time.On the point of settling for the little she could have, she discovered a shameless betrayal.Humiliated, not really wanted at home, she took the most daring decision of her life - to go and live and work in Italy.
It was to be the beginning of a long, passionate, and overwhelming involvement with the Buonaventura family, aristocratic, and torn apart by the strife of Mussolini's new Italy.To Jane, Ottavio Buonaventura and his family were a fascinating challenge.And the impoverished aristocrats at Castagnolo were to discover that the quiet Englishwoman was to revolutionise their lives.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In 1925, Jane Rushton, 31, whose family runs a prestigious wine-importing firm, flees a broken engagement and a rigid home life in London for a tumultuous new existence in the Tuscan countryside. Thereafter, this pleasant if uneven historical romance nicely intertwines two disparate families and two opposing cultures. The highly proper Rushtons are appalled when Jane is hired as a governess by the indolent aristocrat Ottavio Buonaventura. It's bad enough that his vast estate, Castagnolo, is neglected and derelict, but his family is divided between idle scholars and Fascist party bigwigs. Jane sets to reviving the ancient wine-producing estate with new enthusiasm. Making deft use of background material, Stewart lovingly describes the harvest ( vendemmia ), when peasant and aristocrat alike begin the colorful ritual of turning grapes into nectar. As the years move with grim inevitability toward WW II, characters proliferate; the Rushton family travels to Italy and numerous aunts, cousins and maturing adolescents intermingle to create a series of events that unfortunately dilute the story. Yet the author of The Women of Providence portrays a particular time and place with clarity and affection.
