MERILANG PRESS  

RACHEL SARAI'S VINEYARD

A novel by Deborah Rey.

This is a fascinating book that holds the reader in several ways. The setting, war time Holland, is one that British and American readers are not mostly familiar with. We know of the resistance in France but very little about what happened in other occupied countries. And what is more, the heroine of the book is a child, about five years old when she first appears in the remeniscences of her older self, trying to come to terms with family trauna as well as danger. I first read this in manuscriot and was very impressed so was delighted to be asked to publish it.

RACHEL SARAI'S VINEYARD

 A novel by Deborah Rey.

In a Europe where the Nazis apply Henry Ford's industrial philosophy to the destruction of human beings, a little girl might expect her home to be a place of shelter and protection from the indescribable horrors of war. But five-year-old Rachel Sarai must take over her father's work in the Resistance, distribute messages, smuggle people to safety during curfew hours, lie, steal and confront the Gestapo. Her home is a chilling microcosm of the outside world: unsafe and driven by visceral hatred, jealousy, brutality and lust for power. She learns how an unscrupulous woman can manipulate the worst catastrophe in human history to serve her own domestic agenda. She comes to understand the extent of evil one warped individual is capable of, but survives thanks to the unadulterated love another person gives her during the first seven years of her life.

The mature Rachel Sarai telling her story refuses to pretend that life is nice or that she is nice.
You will find no euphemisms here, no evasion, no holding back, no mincing of words.
It's probably pointless waiting for the movie. Most of this book could never be filmed. This is as dark as it gets.

Meirionnydd languages

For Merilang Press bookshop

and other books

Daffni Percival's poetry

David Gardiner's books