Her life will be shaped by some of the most important events of history: the fight for women’s rights, the rise and fall of tyrants, and, ultimately, not one but two pandemics. She tells her story in the form of a letter to someone she loves above all others, recounting devastating heartbreak and passionate affairs, times of both poverty and wealth, terrible loss and immense joy. There, she will come of age, and her first suitor will come calling. Her family loses all and is forced to retreat to a wild and beautiful but remote part of the country.

Through her father’s prescience, the family will come through that crisis unscathed, only to face a new one as the Great Depression transforms the genteel city life she has known.

From the start, her life will be marked by extraordinary events, for the ripples of the Great War are still being felt, even as the Spanish flu arrives on the shores of her South American homeland almost at the moment of her birth. Violeta comes into the world on a stormy day in 1920, the first girl in a family of five boisterous sons. Synopsis from Goodreads: This sweeping novel from the New York Times bestselling author of A Long Petal of the Sea tells the epic story of Violeta del Valle, a woman whose life spans one hundred years and bears witness to the greatest upheavals of the twentieth century. I understand how this became a movie and the trailer looked really appealing.This ARC was provided by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc (via NetGalley) in exchange for an honest review. I can’t say I loved this book and it moved me much, but there are many hidden nooks that a reader such as ourselves can discover buried truths in. The story starts out slow and before long you’re wondering if what Michel Berg does is right? And then he explores his sound of mind and what he should be feeling in regards for Hanna’s actions. Last weekend I had the pleasure of taking a ride with The Reader and experiencing such emotional and philosophical turmoil, I almost had half the mind to stop reading it altogether! The cover intrigued me and I didn’t know what the story was about. I bought this book 3 years ago at a book sale.

As he watches her refuse to defend her innocence, Michael gradually realizes that Hanna may be guarding a secret she considers more shameful than murder. When Michael next sees her, he is a young law student, and she is on trial for a hideous crime. In time she becomes his lover-then she inexplicably disappears. When he falls ill on his way home from school, fifteen-year-old Michael Berg is rescued by Hanna, a woman twice his age. Hailed for its coiled eroticism and the moral claims it makes upon the reader, this mesmerizing novel is a story of love and secrets, horror and compassion, unfolding against the haunted landscape of postwar Germany.

Synopsis of a long petal of the sea