The Promise
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- £3.99
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- £3.99
Publisher Description
'I know this is my final leaving because it's so different from my many other leavings. This time, I actually want Paolo to find someone else-perhaps a lovely Florentine girl who he can marry, someone who will make him happy by giving him children and a family of his own. He deserves it after waiting for more than a decade for me to make up my mind...'
Lisa Clifford was sixteen when she arrived in Florence for the first time, keen to experience life beyond her Australian convent-school and work out what she wanted to do with her future. Falling in love with a local called Paolo was not part of the plan...
The Promise is the story of Lisa's love affair with Paolo, and of her love for Florence and the Tuscan mountains-the landscapes, the people and the food. But far from settling into a contented life in Italy, Lisa soon realised that being an independent and ambitious Australian girl made it difficult to fit in with the age-old traditions of an Italian family. She was torn between her desire to stay with Paolo, and her need to return home-to her family, to the relaxed Australian way of a life, and to a career. Should she stay, or should she go?
Written with humour and passion, The Promise is about loss and heartache and growing up. Above all, it is a story that proves love does find a way-and that some promises are made to be broken.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This second engaging novel from Weisgarber (The Personal History of Rachel DuPree) might have been written a century ago. Set in 1900, the story follows a young bride named Catherine Wainwright, who faces an array of challenges after impulsively leaving her Dayton, Ohio home and heading west to wed. The story has shades of Willa Cather, Sinclair Lewis, and Conrad Richter, and the prose has a streak of formality that gives the book a period flavor, but Catherine's first-person narration (and later that of Nan Ogden, the housekeeper at Catherine's new home) is also appealingly immediate. Catherine received acclaim and gained a bit of regional celebrity as a pianist in Dayton. But a casual friendship with a married man causes provincial tongues to wag, and the gossip leads to canceled concerts and lost teaching opportunities. When Oscar Williams, a childhood friend and prosperous rancher in Texas who has recently become a widower, sends Catherine a marriage proposal, she immediately accepts. It's a wonderful setup for solid storytelling: the city girl learns to do all the hard work of a farm wife and, in the process, gets to know her instant husband and his son, Andre. At first, Catherine and Oscar are less than completely honest with each other, and as truths are revealed, the plot thickens. Warm and winning.
