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Rachel Sarai’s Vinyard by Deborah Rey

When I was asked to publish this book I was really pleased as I had read it in manuscript and enjoyed it. Well, perhaps enjoyed is not quite the right word for a story that hold so much unhappiness. Let’s say I was really impressed. Below is a review I wrote for it.

This is really two books in one. On the one hand it is a story about a child brought up by a hard, antagonistic mother and abused in many ways. Starting from that mother figure’s funeral the now adult Rachel Sarai goes there in the hope of answers. Via flash backs we follow her life up to then. It is anything but a cheerful story but it grips you so that the reader also wants the answers.Then there is the second book, or the background to the story. This is wartime and then occupied Holland and Rachel has no easy time in that either. Her father is involved with the resistance and Rachel Sarai, from the age of about five years, carries messages for the resistance, inserted by her father in the soles of her shoes. Being fair-haired and Arian looking the German soldiers tend to pat her on the head and let her pass but all the time there is fear. She also escorts Jews across the moors to a safe house whence they can then escape from Holland. I certainly learnt a lot I didn’t know about events at that time.

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