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True Harvest
A reluctant daughter takes over a centuries-old winery in Cold War Germany.
A Polish physician crosses into the West during the harvest.
A love story that defies time, distance and political upheaval.
When her father has a stroke, Marielle Hartmann gives up her rising career as a banker to return home to run her family’s 300-year-old winery just as the harvest season begins.
Because she’s been away from the land, Marielle lacks the knowledge, instincts and confidence necessary to achieve a successful vintage. Encouraged by her mother to seek help, she grudgingly turns to Tomas Marek, a member of the Polish crew that has worked her family’s vineyards for years.
Violent weather, different world views and Marielle’s pride work against them, but a near-fatal accident with one of the crew forces Marielle to trust Tomas if she is to save the harvest. As their relationship deepens, will it survive both political barriers and family loyalties keeping them apart?
A Polish physician crosses into the West during the harvest.
A love story that defies time, distance and political upheaval.
When her father has a stroke, Marielle Hartmann gives up her rising career as a banker to return home to run her family’s 300-year-old winery just as the harvest season begins.
Because she’s been away from the land, Marielle lacks the knowledge, instincts and confidence necessary to achieve a successful vintage. Encouraged by her mother to seek help, she grudgingly turns to Tomas Marek, a member of the Polish crew that has worked her family’s vineyards for years.
Violent weather, different world views and Marielle’s pride work against them, but a near-fatal accident with one of the crew forces Marielle to trust Tomas if she is to save the harvest. As their relationship deepens, will it survive both political barriers and family loyalties keeping them apart?
134 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2008
1 person is currently reading
7 people want to read
About the author
Linda Cardillo
29 books46 followersLINDA CARDILLO is an award-winning author of historical fiction and historical romance. She writes about the old country and the new, the tangle and embrace of family, and finding courage in the midst of loss.
From the time she was in high school, Linda held in her heart the dream of writing the Great American Novel. But she was also brought up to know that she had to be “practical” and make a living. After graduating from college, she found a job as a secretary at a venerable Boston publishing house (barely passing the typing test). Within a year she had moved into an editorial position for college textbooks in the sciences and social sciences. It still wasn’t the Great American Novel, but she got to immerse herself in American intellectual and social history.
After earning her MBA from Harvard Business School—where she wrote comedy for the annual student musical and performed in a platinum blonde wig while seven months pregnant—she got divorced and gave birth. She then became circulation manager for the launch of Inc. magazine and got a crash course in magazine marketing. Unfortunately, she also crashed head-on into her boss and got fired a year after the magazine’s successful start.
Around this time she got an invitation to her tenth college reunion, signed up to attend and fell in love with a man she hadn’t seen since freshman year. On an excursion to a zoo, her son got carsick and threw up. This wonderful man calmly got him out of the car, cleaned him up and took him for a walk in the fresh air, and she knew she had a keeper.
Linda and the keeper moved to Germany for a few years with their children. While living in Europe, she received an unexpected gift of love letters that became the seeds for her first novel, Dancing on Sunday Afternoons.
Linda has been married for over forty years to the keeper, a brilliant scientist and sailor, and is the mother of three children of whom she is enormously proud. She loves to cook and is happiest when the twelve chairs around her dining room table are filled with people enjoying her food. She speaks four languages, some better than others. She tries to play the piano every night—sometimes by herself and sometimes in an improvisational duet with her younger son. She does The New York Times Sunday crossword puzzle in ink, a practice she learned from her mother. From her mother she also absorbed a love of opera, especially those of Puccini and Verdi, whose music filled her home when she was a child. She once climbed Mt. Kenya and has very curly hair. Linda and the keeper live in Western Massachusetts.
From the time she was in high school, Linda held in her heart the dream of writing the Great American Novel. But she was also brought up to know that she had to be “practical” and make a living. After graduating from college, she found a job as a secretary at a venerable Boston publishing house (barely passing the typing test). Within a year she had moved into an editorial position for college textbooks in the sciences and social sciences. It still wasn’t the Great American Novel, but she got to immerse herself in American intellectual and social history.
After earning her MBA from Harvard Business School—where she wrote comedy for the annual student musical and performed in a platinum blonde wig while seven months pregnant—she got divorced and gave birth. She then became circulation manager for the launch of Inc. magazine and got a crash course in magazine marketing. Unfortunately, she also crashed head-on into her boss and got fired a year after the magazine’s successful start.
Around this time she got an invitation to her tenth college reunion, signed up to attend and fell in love with a man she hadn’t seen since freshman year. On an excursion to a zoo, her son got carsick and threw up. This wonderful man calmly got him out of the car, cleaned him up and took him for a walk in the fresh air, and she knew she had a keeper.
Linda and the keeper moved to Germany for a few years with their children. While living in Europe, she received an unexpected gift of love letters that became the seeds for her first novel, Dancing on Sunday Afternoons.
Linda has been married for over forty years to the keeper, a brilliant scientist and sailor, and is the mother of three children of whom she is enormously proud. She loves to cook and is happiest when the twelve chairs around her dining room table are filled with people enjoying her food. She speaks four languages, some better than others. She tries to play the piano every night—sometimes by herself and sometimes in an improvisational duet with her younger son. She does The New York Times Sunday crossword puzzle in ink, a practice she learned from her mother. From her mother she also absorbed a love of opera, especially those of Puccini and Verdi, whose music filled her home when she was a child. She once climbed Mt. Kenya and has very curly hair. Linda and the keeper live in Western Massachusetts.
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August 24, 2021
The book is an easy afternoon's read. A tense love story between two persons we hope will somehow get together despite the "iron curtain", different cultures, and different perspectives on life. As we keep hoping things will work out for the couple, the author takes us through the momentous years from 1975 to 1988: the desperate poverty and searching for food in all corners in Poland, the religiosity of the Poles and return of the Pope to his native land, the "guest working " of Poles in Germany for pitiful wages; the proud centuries old folk traditions of the Rhine region, the stirring of the Solidarity movement and students in Poland for freedoms ; and finally the fall of the Berlin Wall and the open borders between the two countries. As interesting as the characters of the lovers are, it is fascinating how outside developments determine individual lives. People influence history most definitely, but history past and present can play havoc with the lives and choices of persons. The author has well captured the hopes and aspirations of people in the 196o's, 1970's, and 1980's in Poland and Germany and gives a good understanding of the current hopes of Poles and policies of the regime
Displaying 1 of 1 review