This Splendid Earth

Brussac Family #1

by Rh Value Publishing

On a stormy night of political intrigue in 1830, dashing Jean de Crussac took -- and tamed -- headstrong Anne de Grenville. From that smoldering union, a proud and ambitious dynasty was born -- destined to forge a wine-growing empire such as never had been seen in the lush, rolling hills of distant California.

Genres: Historical, France, Historical Fiction, Fiction, Romance, Historical Romance

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1978

Reviews

[Meredith is a hot mess · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book's song: This Bitter Earth by Dinah Washington

I started This Splendid Earth wanting a book similar to the movie Giant. Essentially, I wanted a family saga epic in scale with triumphs, betrayal, tragedy, and love.

This book delivered.

Truly, I cannot begin to recap the plot (something I considered doing since there is only 1 other review up right now), but if you enjoy family sagas give this a try if you can get your hands on it. I would not describe this as a romance, though there is romance in this book. The author portrays almost all the life stages of the main characters, specifically focusing on the later stages. Like life, not all characters receive justice and some are unfairly wronged by circumstance. Yet there are also moments of triumph, adventure, and love that make it all worth it.

Random thoughts:



Serious spoilers, please don't read if you think you might read the book :) This is really for myself.




Jean de Brussac, Don Diego, and Anne were my favorite characters. Don Diego's romance with Anne? This is how you write a love after loss romance. Was it bittersweet? Of course. The author handled Anne's transition gracefully, yet in a powerful way. The mutual respect both Don Diego and Anne had together was admirable. Don Diego was such a gentleman. Jean de Brussac was a character unto himself though ~ gotta love a good rags to riches story and that is his story. And it was lovely to witness Anne's arranged marriage with de Brussac grow slowly from contempt, to respect, to something more.

Claude sucked. That's all I'm going to say about him. When I reread this book I will be skipping Claude & Danielle's parts.

The author did Marie dirty. I should deduct a star for what he did to her. Sickens me to think about it.

I forgot her name, but Claude and Danielle's oldest daughter? I think Mary? OMG I LOVED her romance with that other guy (forgot his name) and I'm saddened book 2 didn't go into more detail on their new life together. The author missed an opportunity with that. She had the potential to be a little Scarlett O'Hara, but just if she somehow managed to settle down with her true love.

There's more I want to say about the portrayal of the gay son, I don't think the author (who was himself gay) was proud of the portrayal. He admitted in interviews to giving gay characters tragic endings or making them evil because that's what the publishers expected, and he enjoyed writing gay romance novels later on in his career. Here's a couple interesting interviews with Victor J. Banis:

https://elisa-rolle.livejournal.com/3...

https://wildeoats.wordpress.com/an-in...



Favorite quotes:



Now she felt drained & strangely light-headed. She was pale and drawn-looking, but her eyes were dry & her chin when she came into the study was tilted proudly upward. Perhaps for the first time she looked every inch the aristocrat that she was. The fine steel of which she was shaped had been tempered by the fire.

....

"Papa, there is something I must say...You may tell your baron he has bought his bride."

...

The man was old enough to have lived through Revolution, & no doubt he knew firsthand what a monster the Parisian mob could be when roused. Jean had been born in the Revolution, in the very throes of the uprising. His pregnant mother had been in the crowds at the storming of the Bastille, and it may have been the excitement that brought on her labor. "Little Jean had been born in a gutter on a side street. An auspicious beginning," he was accustomed to saying; he was fond of the story and told it often, to the horror of his more aristocratic friends.

"From the gutter in which I lay, I soaked up all the hardness of the street. The streets of Paris are hard and the people who live in them harder. They are shrewd and tough, and now they have learned that they are stronger than those who rule them, and all of this, you see, I learned before I was an hour old."

His friends laughed, but they knew there was truth in what he said. Jean de Brussac was a merchant like his father before him. His father had joined the Revolution a penniless peasant; he had emerged from it a wealthy merchant. But when it came to the ability to see an opportunity & seize it, & hold tenaciously to it in the face of any challenge the father was nothing compared to the son...

...

Jean was known as honest as well as shrewd, a man whose word in a transaction was better than any contract, but he was not a man to try to fool or cheat.

...

"I mean, they're your people, your class--isn't that what all this nonsense is about, class against class-those people had masters too, and they turned against them. And why did they stop here? Why didn't they burn this house down the same as others?"

"The seigneur is well known here," Henriette said. "They know what kind of man he is."

She seemed to think this explained everything. "What kind of man is he?"

...

She had been loyal to him, at least in her heart and mind, regardless of what had been done to her body. And perhaps, after all, that was love. He knew then what had made him want her all along--not just her prettiness, not just her aristocratic heritage, but a force within that perhaps even she had not known she possessed. Until today it had been an undefined something that had drawn him toward her. There were women who loved like that, for whom love meant loyalty, and vice versa-not just loyalty of the bed, but something more than that. All his life he had looked for this in a woman, and now it was his, in his own wife.

...

But where would he go?" Anne cried.
Jean was silent for so long that she half-thought he hadn't heard her at all, and when he replied, his answer was so unexpected that she could hardly believe she heard correctly.

"Mexico," he said.
"Mexico?"
"Alta California. we have a land grant there, a gift years ago from the Spanish ambassador. They say men are carving a New World there..."

...

"Everything has its price," Reverend Willows said. "The sunset costs us the moment in which we pause to look at it. We pay for a great love or a great dream in self-discipline, in self-sacrifice, in the giving of our love an our time and sometimes the sacrificing of our happiness. He grew silent. After a moment she realized that he was praying, his head bowed, his eyes closed. She was embarrassed, thinking that she was an intrusion upon his privacy, but when a moment later he opened his eyes, he smiled with surprising shyness and said, "A very impressive cathedral, isn't it?"

He left her there. She looked and saw that the sky had turned pink and coral and gray, and as the light of dawn was born in the sky, a new light was born within her, too. There was a new day before them and with it new hope, new possibilities. A thousand men before her, a thousand million people, had looked up at the reddening sky or had seen the fragile green budding of the trees in spring, had heard the sudden song of a bird winging skywar, and had felt hope rekindled in their breasts. The dark night was over, the long winter ended, God was still in his heaven. How plain, how often repeated those homilies, yet what succor they gave. A bird cried somewhere in the rocks above her, and now in the distant valley she could see the glow of campfires and the smoke rising from the brown bosom of the land.

At last she turned and went down the path to the wagons. And she, child of the earth, felt a thrill of response within her. She was thousands of miles from France. Between here and there lay an entire continent and a vast ocean, and yet in her heart she suddenly felt that she had come home.

...

A hawk had winged into view overhead, circling lazily. She wanted suddenly to seize this moment, to hold it to her breast and prevent its passing. There had been a time, so long a time, when there had been no joy in aliveness, when living had meant struggling to survive each day, had meant nothing more than enduring. To revel in the senses--the soft whinny of the horses as they grazed, the cool silkiness of the grass beneath her, the scent of earth and sage--was to suddenly be young again, to shed the years that had begun for a time to weigh so heavily upon her.

"All my life, you see, I never had to do anything more than be a woman. I never had to think profound thoughts, or take action--not real action, to cope with anything. My husband thought and did for me, and after that, for a time, my son. But here, the land, the life, demanded more. For the first time I had to think and do, I had to struggle and fight and even kill. The woman I was before could never have survived here, and so she had to die, and I was born in her place; but I am not she."

"They write songs and stories about the men of the West, but in time to come it is the pioneer women they will praise."

"Claude called me that once, a long time ago. At the time I was offended, but now I think it is rather a compliment."

...

Claude's mother could be frightfully stubborn once she made up her mind to something. In her own way Anne was as private a person as little David; in the end she would do exactly what she wanted to do.

...

Very well, he said, turning back to face his son. "The land is yours if you want it. Take the man the cuttings he wants, and enough to start your own vineyards. There's just one thing I want from you."

"What's that, Pa?" Adam asked, his eyes wide with excitement.

"Make me wine, son. Make me some damned good wine, the kind we can build an empire on.

...

[Naksed · Rating 1 out of 5]

Very compellingly written historical saga that begins with the Second French Revolution (1830). The plot was well-paced, with good characterizations, good twists and turns, an interesting, plausible world-building, and surprisingly little corny purple prose. The story is centered around the marriage of convenience between a headstrong aristocratic young Parisienne who (initially) only thinks of city fashion, amusements, and Romance with a Capital R and an older, once-widowed, cynical social parvenu who prefers life in the country, where he works the fields of his vineyard hands-on, just like his peasant forefathers. It really sucked me in...until a jump in years and then we have to read about their stupid children and grandchildren lol. Ah non! Warning for those reader friends of mine who like historical romance/fiction, this is quite a long saga and unfortunately for those of us who read for escapism and a happy ending, not only does the author kill off the main couple, the female main character is actually brutally murdered! Merde, as they say :(

[Michelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this a long time ago and it spans the French Revolutionary period. The one major thing I remember about this book is that the main character has sex with a person that doesn't end up being her husband within the first few pages. Just not something you expect with your typical historical drama!!

[Elaine Hargrave · Rating 5 out of 5]

Splendid family saga set in France and America. In the days of the French revolution with the large estates amid poverty. Having been forced into a duel after his sister was deflowered by a much more experienced man who also neglected to tell her he was married Claude unexpectedly killed him and in doing so forced the emigration to California and establishing a vineyard. Fabulous saga with love, betrayal and so much more.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

Enjoyed every page

[ANGELIA · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an excellent family saga with a lot of history thrown in, though I can't say I cared for all of the characters and the situations they got in, like a brother and sister unwittingly sleeping with the same man, and a father and son sharing a mistress. There's also a very long separation between the main couple (not their fault) as well as a big age difference, which made me root for the OM.

There are some characters that are really crummy, others that can't see the forest for the trees, and some that are both admirable and likeable. It's not always a pleasant read, but it's never a dull one.