Gabrielle Leblanc Dupree is our principal guide to the French art of champagne making. She lives at Chateau Fouché-Leblanc with her mother-in-law, Josephine, and other generations of the same family. These women work in the vineyards, which cover two hundred hectares, and winery. But war is on the horizon.
Josephine, in her late seventies, is starting to retreat into memory loss, but still knows the correct way to throw a formal party and which fine vintage wines to serve. Her daughter-in-law hasn’t told Josephine that the best vintages are now hidden in a walled-up cellar ahead of probable occupation. Nobody wants to be a doom-monger or sound disloyal. But as surely as one season follows another, covetous eyes are fixed on the treasures of the Champagne region. Josephine’s granddaughter Paulette is just a schoolgirl running around the vineyard, where there are now no men, just family members like Marta and Helene. Until the worst occurs.
The Champagne region was in the Nazi-occupied northern part of France, as was Paris. The Third Reich soldiers marched through towns burning and looting, shown to us through Gabrielle’s eyes. They also imprisoned and killed Jewish people, so one of the characters has more reason than others to be fearful. This story – while a novel – may disturb, scare, and distress. This was the background of the war which was being fought on frontlines; this captive-rich land fed and supplied the troops. We see along with Josephine that German wine merchants used to dealing with the wineries were commissioned as officers and appointed to oversee the plunder. The winemakers’ home is the first requisition.
To save the dismal events from being too wearying, author Renee Ryan has cooked up the kind of scheme people under occupation probably came up with themselves; the ladies pretend that they don’t get along, don’t respect older generations, and Josephine is quite senile. They hope the occupiers will thus dismiss and ignore them, concerned only with comfort and fine dining. And, sad to say, with intimidating these attractive women.
The Leblanc widows don’t have men in battle to worry over personally, which is another nice touch, as our minds are focused on the women themselves. Helene, Paulette’s mother, is an artist in the quiet season, but all her concern has to be for keeping the child safe. These women have learned the hard way that they can only rely on their own strength, and their unity as a family through marriage. And filling the daily lives of these brave people are harvests good and bad, bicycles and wine presses. Don’t mention the parachutist. Don’t give away the Resistance. Renee Ryan has built a solid historical novel with every emotion given its turn, in THE WIDOWS OF CHAMPAGNE.
For readers of Lilac Girls and The Lost Girls of Paris comes a captivating novel of resilience, as three generations of women battle to save their family’s vineyard during WWII.
Champagne, 1939
Gabrielle Leblanc Dupree is taking her family’s future into her hands. While she should be preparing for a lavish party to celebrate two centuries of champagne making, she secretly hides Chateau Fouché-Leblanc’s most precious vintages behind a fake wall in the cellar in preparation for the looming war. But when she joins the resistance, the coveted champagne isn’t the most dangerous secret her cellar must conceal…
A former Parisian socialite, Gabrielle’s mother, Hélène, lost her husband to another war. Now her home has been requisitioned by the Germans, who pillage vineyards to satisfy the Third Reich’s thirst for the finest champagne. There’s even more at stake than Hélène dares admit. She has kept her heritage a secret…and no one is safe in Nazi-occupied France.
Josephine, the family matriarch, watches as her beloved vineyard faces its most difficult harvest yet. As her daughter-in-law and granddaughters contend with the enemies and unexpected allies in their midst, Josephine’s deep faith leads to her own path of resistance.
Across years and continents, the Leblanc women will draw on their courage and wits, determined against all odds to preserve their lives, their freedom and their legacy…
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