What do you think?
Rate this book
Thurston House
Jeremiah Thurston built Thurston House, San Francisco's grandest mansion. When he found himself alone with his infant daughter, Sabrina, he was determined to bring her up to run the biggest mining business in California. Nothing would stop her from taking over his dynasty -- not the San Francisco earthquake, the deadly schemes of a cunning rival, the Great depression, or her own needs and determination as she carries on the traditions established by her father.
416 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1983
369 people are currently reading
2546 people want to read
About the author
Danielle Steel
911 books16.8k followersDanielle Steel has been hailed as one of the world's bestselling authors, with almost a billion copies of her novels sold. Her many international bestsellers include All That Glitters, Royal, Daddy's Girls, The Wedding Dress, The Numbers Game, Moral Compass, Spy, and other highly acclaimed novels. She is also the author of His Bright Light, the story of her son Nick Traina's life and death; A Gift of Hope, a memoir of her work with the homeless; Expect a Miracle, a book of her favorite quotations for inspiration and comfort; Pure Joy, about the dogs she and her family have loved; and the children's books Pretty Minnie in Paris and Pretty Minnie in Hollywood.
Facebook.com/DanielleSteelOfficial
Instagram: @officialdaniellesteel
Facebook.com/DanielleSteelOfficial
Instagram: @officialdaniellesteel
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 187 reviews
May 5, 2024
3.5/5
Wow. I’ve read a few Danielle Steel books and I’ve always found them to be the same, annoying and just a straight up copy paste but this? Oh my gosh, this was actually very decent!
It’s about a man named Jeremiah who married a woman named Camille (she was 17 when they got engaged tho…), and took her to live with him to the countryside which she absolutely hated and yet he built a mansion for her. All he wanted was her love and to have a baby which he managed to get but guess what? She abandoned him (CAUSE SHE’S S B I T C H) right after she gave birth. The book is mostly Jeremiah’s aaaand Sabrina’s (his daughter) story, including a lot of historical subjects.
Not only did I absolutely adore the main character and I was rooting for her all day long but I also found the plot to be very intriguing, and very dramatic (in a good way, cause it was entertaining).
The characters were just great, they absolutely knew how to make someone want to punch their face.
My only complain is that I did find it quite long at some parts? Like, just a lot of extra stuff that really wasn’t relevant and how both dialogues and descriptions would get repetitive every once in a while.
As for the rest, it was good!
Wow. I’ve read a few Danielle Steel books and I’ve always found them to be the same, annoying and just a straight up copy paste but this? Oh my gosh, this was actually very decent!
It’s about a man named Jeremiah who married a woman named Camille (she was 17 when they got engaged tho…), and took her to live with him to the countryside which she absolutely hated and yet he built a mansion for her. All he wanted was her love and to have a baby which he managed to get but guess what? She abandoned him (CAUSE SHE’S S B I T C H) right after she gave birth. The book is mostly Jeremiah’s aaaand Sabrina’s (his daughter) story, including a lot of historical subjects.
Not only did I absolutely adore the main character and I was rooting for her all day long but I also found the plot to be very intriguing, and very dramatic (in a good way, cause it was entertaining).
The characters were just great, they absolutely knew how to make someone want to punch their face.
My only complain is that I did find it quite long at some parts? Like, just a lot of extra stuff that really wasn’t relevant and how both dialogues and descriptions would get repetitive every once in a while.
As for the rest, it was good!
January 23, 2008
Danielle Steel, Thurston House (Dell, 1983)
Over the past quarter-century or so, Danielle Steel has sold more novels than there are people in America. Fifty-three books, with sales (at present, according to Steel's website) of more than four hundred sixty-three million. She's one of a handful of novelists who have not had a single book go out-of-print in decades. Remember those old Slim Whitman late-night TV ads talking about how he'd sold more albums than Elvis and The Beatles? Well, Danielle Steel really HAS. She's the Slim Whitman of the book business. So what is it, I asked myself for years, that makes people read Danielle Steel so obsessively? What is it about her books that makes them so all-fired popular? I must have known I would eventually want to know the answer, because some years back I picked up a worn-out dog-eared copy of Thurston House. And thus my education in mass-market romance begins.
To start with, every bad thing I've ever heard about Danielle Steel novels is absolutely the case. Whoever does her editing needs to be boiled in oil. The grammar is atrocious. Ellipses scurry about the pages like ants on a rich man's corpse. Sentences like "The sun sank slowly into the hills framing the lush green splendor of the Napa Valley." are endemic. (That's the opening sentence of this five-hundred-page epic.) The book itself is so overwritten as to make a Presidential speech sound spare and to the point. Keeping my cynicism in check, I decided that couldn't be the reason for hundreds of millions of books sold, and that her fans were reading in spite of, not because of, these things. And so I dug a bit deeper.
Hypothesis number two: sex. Romance novels have sex, right? (Well, they contain sex. Though most used bookstore owners will swear up and down they have no idea how so many of them got on the shelves, so...) Everyone's familiar with the cliché of the Fabio-fronted bodice ripper. Maybe so, but not in Danielle Steel's novels. Five hundred pages and two sex scenes that are less explicit than anything to be found in Victorian erotica. Ever read Victorian erotica? Nuns read Victorian erotica when they want to take their minds off lustful thoughts. So, okay, it's not the explicit sexual content. Deeper we go.
Could it be, erm, plot? This one centers (as should be obvious from the title) around Thurston House, a mansion built in San Francisco after the Civil War by Jeremiah Thurston. He builds it for his young Georgia wife, Camille. It turns out to be the only thing about being married to Jeremiah that Camille really likes, so she ends up absconding to France with a penniless Count and leaving Jeremiah with the house and a daughter, Sabrina. Sabrina is actually the main character of the book (one remembers, wistfully, Mervyn Peake's words about wanting to write an epic novel wherein the main character is only a few months old after "many thousands of pages," and wonders when Steel read those words), and grows up to be that rarest of things, a career woman at the turn of the century. Complications, etc. As far as plots go, it's actually not all that bad. The book may be overwritten, but Steel does know how to keep the pages turning, and while everything that happens therein is predictable, she at least keeps the reader's ire in check by making sure it doesn't become too predictable until a few pages before whatever large event is coming up happens. While Americans have given up steak tartare for Big Macs, even the most jaded McFreak needs a Whopper once in a while. There has to be something more than that.
Characters? Oh, please. Jeremiah Thurston falls in love with three different women in the book's first twenty-five pages (well, okay, he's been seeing one of them for six years, but he falls in love with the other two within five minutes of meeting them, and he meets them within a week of one another. I mean, come on). Even if everyone else in the novel had been drawn with the precision of the characters in, say, a Don DeLillo novel, and perfect consistency, Jeremiah's antics at the beginning would have been enough to cause aspersions to be cast. Well, let me clarify. It's not just Jeremiah's antics, it's the motives that Steel ascribes to them. I've read more than enough good books where a randy main character goes rutting with multiple women in relatively few pages. Those books, though, don't offer the hope that said randy main character will drop everything and marry whichever one says "yes" first. Life just doesn't work that way. To be fair, Steel lets us know she realizes this. Camille (remember her?) says of her father that he has a mistress in New Orleans, and everyone, including her mother, knows this. She mentions this while asking Jeremiah if he's going to be that way. He, of course, says no, and sticks to it despite shabby treatment from Camille. And, of course, everyone we meet, especially in the supporting roles, is so beautiful it hurts to look at them.
It was at about this point in my ruminations (ed. note: originally typed there: "ruinations." Indeed.) that it dawned on me what it is that Danielle Steel has that so deeply affects tens of millions of fans and causes them to buy hundreds of millions of novels. A few paragraphs back, I mentioned that good old Victorian erotica. You know the type. Men get simultaneously scandalized and titillated by the flash of a bare ankle, and the closest anyone gets to sex is that time-honored sport of "struggling with her corset." While no one would accuse Ms. Steel of being Victorian in her writing style (thankfully), the morality in her books has a distinct air of nineteenth-century Queen about it. We never see anyone having sex unless they're (a) married or (b) getting married. Sex between the unmarried is only hinted at in the most oblique terms. Those who have been married before who are generally good folk and ripe to get married again are either widowed/widowers or were those who were left, not those who did the leaving. (This is an hypothesis on my part; Jeremiah is the only one in this book with a main part who gets left, and he's too married to his work to find a new wife.) Those who do the leaving are vile creatures worthy of contempt by the reader; there's never a situation in which someone could have a good reason for leaving a spouse. Men are perfectly beastly to women at times, and rape is even hinted at, but always with an eye towards plot advancement. No one in the book has a character that is any shade of grey; everyone is either good or evil. (Parties can switch sides, if necessary to advance plot. Besides, every romance novel needs a pair who are originally at each other's throats before falling madly in love.) And, most assuredly (and, one would think, most offensively to female readers) is that, while the heroine may prove herself to be a self-sufficient and capable career woman in a male-dominated society over the objections of all around her, surmounting insurmountable odds in order to do so, the career woman is only a career woman as long as is necessary. The purpose of the woman in the romance novel is to marry and beget children.
Once you've got your head around the particular form of escapism that takes 1900-era morals into account, everything falls into place. Steel is read for the same reasons other romance authors are, but her formula contains a particular set of rules that are stricter than most. I started out wanting to learn why so many people read Danielle Steel. I seem to have done so. The idea that so many millions of people could wholeheartedly embrace such strictures as actual ideals for the way the world should be is cause for intense, painful despair. That's not the fault of the book itself, however. It does what it sets out to do. It creates its own fantasy world (consistent, one assumes, with that of the other fifty-two mega-bestsellers that have flowed from Ms. Steel's pen), populates it, and gives the reader a story within it that conforms to its rules. It is safe and predictable. It would be better were some uppity editor to curtail Steel's overwhelming use of ellipses and adverbs, but must be given some grudging respect for its readability. Still, as much as I try not to fault the book itself for its moral structure, I can't help letting some of that creep in. I`ve tried Danielle Steel now; I'll stick with Barbara Michaels, Dean "Deanna Dwyer" Koontz, Janis Flores, and other more liberated romance novelists. * ½
Over the past quarter-century or so, Danielle Steel has sold more novels than there are people in America. Fifty-three books, with sales (at present, according to Steel's website) of more than four hundred sixty-three million. She's one of a handful of novelists who have not had a single book go out-of-print in decades. Remember those old Slim Whitman late-night TV ads talking about how he'd sold more albums than Elvis and The Beatles? Well, Danielle Steel really HAS. She's the Slim Whitman of the book business. So what is it, I asked myself for years, that makes people read Danielle Steel so obsessively? What is it about her books that makes them so all-fired popular? I must have known I would eventually want to know the answer, because some years back I picked up a worn-out dog-eared copy of Thurston House. And thus my education in mass-market romance begins.
To start with, every bad thing I've ever heard about Danielle Steel novels is absolutely the case. Whoever does her editing needs to be boiled in oil. The grammar is atrocious. Ellipses scurry about the pages like ants on a rich man's corpse. Sentences like "The sun sank slowly into the hills framing the lush green splendor of the Napa Valley." are endemic. (That's the opening sentence of this five-hundred-page epic.) The book itself is so overwritten as to make a Presidential speech sound spare and to the point. Keeping my cynicism in check, I decided that couldn't be the reason for hundreds of millions of books sold, and that her fans were reading in spite of, not because of, these things. And so I dug a bit deeper.
Hypothesis number two: sex. Romance novels have sex, right? (Well, they contain sex. Though most used bookstore owners will swear up and down they have no idea how so many of them got on the shelves, so...) Everyone's familiar with the cliché of the Fabio-fronted bodice ripper. Maybe so, but not in Danielle Steel's novels. Five hundred pages and two sex scenes that are less explicit than anything to be found in Victorian erotica. Ever read Victorian erotica? Nuns read Victorian erotica when they want to take their minds off lustful thoughts. So, okay, it's not the explicit sexual content. Deeper we go.
Could it be, erm, plot? This one centers (as should be obvious from the title) around Thurston House, a mansion built in San Francisco after the Civil War by Jeremiah Thurston. He builds it for his young Georgia wife, Camille. It turns out to be the only thing about being married to Jeremiah that Camille really likes, so she ends up absconding to France with a penniless Count and leaving Jeremiah with the house and a daughter, Sabrina. Sabrina is actually the main character of the book (one remembers, wistfully, Mervyn Peake's words about wanting to write an epic novel wherein the main character is only a few months old after "many thousands of pages," and wonders when Steel read those words), and grows up to be that rarest of things, a career woman at the turn of the century. Complications, etc. As far as plots go, it's actually not all that bad. The book may be overwritten, but Steel does know how to keep the pages turning, and while everything that happens therein is predictable, she at least keeps the reader's ire in check by making sure it doesn't become too predictable until a few pages before whatever large event is coming up happens. While Americans have given up steak tartare for Big Macs, even the most jaded McFreak needs a Whopper once in a while. There has to be something more than that.
Characters? Oh, please. Jeremiah Thurston falls in love with three different women in the book's first twenty-five pages (well, okay, he's been seeing one of them for six years, but he falls in love with the other two within five minutes of meeting them, and he meets them within a week of one another. I mean, come on). Even if everyone else in the novel had been drawn with the precision of the characters in, say, a Don DeLillo novel, and perfect consistency, Jeremiah's antics at the beginning would have been enough to cause aspersions to be cast. Well, let me clarify. It's not just Jeremiah's antics, it's the motives that Steel ascribes to them. I've read more than enough good books where a randy main character goes rutting with multiple women in relatively few pages. Those books, though, don't offer the hope that said randy main character will drop everything and marry whichever one says "yes" first. Life just doesn't work that way. To be fair, Steel lets us know she realizes this. Camille (remember her?) says of her father that he has a mistress in New Orleans, and everyone, including her mother, knows this. She mentions this while asking Jeremiah if he's going to be that way. He, of course, says no, and sticks to it despite shabby treatment from Camille. And, of course, everyone we meet, especially in the supporting roles, is so beautiful it hurts to look at them.
It was at about this point in my ruminations (ed. note: originally typed there: "ruinations." Indeed.) that it dawned on me what it is that Danielle Steel has that so deeply affects tens of millions of fans and causes them to buy hundreds of millions of novels. A few paragraphs back, I mentioned that good old Victorian erotica. You know the type. Men get simultaneously scandalized and titillated by the flash of a bare ankle, and the closest anyone gets to sex is that time-honored sport of "struggling with her corset." While no one would accuse Ms. Steel of being Victorian in her writing style (thankfully), the morality in her books has a distinct air of nineteenth-century Queen about it. We never see anyone having sex unless they're (a) married or (b) getting married. Sex between the unmarried is only hinted at in the most oblique terms. Those who have been married before who are generally good folk and ripe to get married again are either widowed/widowers or were those who were left, not those who did the leaving. (This is an hypothesis on my part; Jeremiah is the only one in this book with a main part who gets left, and he's too married to his work to find a new wife.) Those who do the leaving are vile creatures worthy of contempt by the reader; there's never a situation in which someone could have a good reason for leaving a spouse. Men are perfectly beastly to women at times, and rape is even hinted at, but always with an eye towards plot advancement. No one in the book has a character that is any shade of grey; everyone is either good or evil. (Parties can switch sides, if necessary to advance plot. Besides, every romance novel needs a pair who are originally at each other's throats before falling madly in love.) And, most assuredly (and, one would think, most offensively to female readers) is that, while the heroine may prove herself to be a self-sufficient and capable career woman in a male-dominated society over the objections of all around her, surmounting insurmountable odds in order to do so, the career woman is only a career woman as long as is necessary. The purpose of the woman in the romance novel is to marry and beget children.
Once you've got your head around the particular form of escapism that takes 1900-era morals into account, everything falls into place. Steel is read for the same reasons other romance authors are, but her formula contains a particular set of rules that are stricter than most. I started out wanting to learn why so many people read Danielle Steel. I seem to have done so. The idea that so many millions of people could wholeheartedly embrace such strictures as actual ideals for the way the world should be is cause for intense, painful despair. That's not the fault of the book itself, however. It does what it sets out to do. It creates its own fantasy world (consistent, one assumes, with that of the other fifty-two mega-bestsellers that have flowed from Ms. Steel's pen), populates it, and gives the reader a story within it that conforms to its rules. It is safe and predictable. It would be better were some uppity editor to curtail Steel's overwhelming use of ellipses and adverbs, but must be given some grudging respect for its readability. Still, as much as I try not to fault the book itself for its moral structure, I can't help letting some of that creep in. I`ve tried Danielle Steel now; I'll stick with Barbara Michaels, Dean "Deanna Dwyer" Koontz, Janis Flores, and other more liberated romance novelists. * ½
October 1, 2021
Now this one I do remember. But only the title! I will see if I will ever read this oldies again.
I do recommend her as an author for a certain time and place. I have enjoyed her books over the years, there is no doubt about that.
I do recommend her as an author for a certain time and place. I have enjoyed her books over the years, there is no doubt about that.
May 13, 2013
This is my um-teenth D.S. novel I’ve read to date, some I’ve liked…some I’ve hated. This one I liked. Really liked. This may be a front-runner for one of my favorites of her novels.
Thurston House is the story of Jeremiah Thurston & the legacy that he built. It’s divided into 3 different “books”. I’m a sucker for a good, epic, Historical-fiction novel & this one fit the bill. At over 500pages, it’ll take you awhile to get through, but it will hold your interest.
Book 1 introduces you to Jeremiah Thurston; Napa Valley, CA, 1860. She opens the novel with laying down the foundation that the rest of the epic is built upon. Thurston is a small-time owner of a quicksilver mine beginning his life with his young bride. A lost-battle with influenza takes the life of his bride & he spends the next several decades in bachelor-dom, building up his mining empire. Alone with his housekeeper (Hannah), she becomes the mother-figure he never had & she, in turn, becomes a pivotal character in the novel. On a cross-country train ride to Atlanta, middle-aged Thurston meets Amelia & falls immediately in-love, however, its not reciprocated & a strong friendship is built that, also, transpires throughout the rest of the novel. Once in Atlanta, he meets the (very) young , 17year old Camilia Beauchamp & she quickly becomes his wife.
Now I LOVE a good villain in a novel…love them! I have a weakness for nastiness, debauchery, bitchiness, arrogance, vile, great villain characters (no surprise my favorite movie characters are; Wicked Witch of the West, the Evil Queen in Snow White, Cruella DeVille from 101 Dalmatians. They just make things “interesting” *insert maniacal “wa-ha-ha” laugh*). Camille definitely falls under the category of “villain”. Evil! Right from the beginning she weaseled her way into Jeremiah’s heart (as only a young girl can do to a middle-aged man), he’s beyond loaded with money & she is the quintessential “gold-digger”. He even had clues prior to the wedding that she had ulterior motives, but chose to ignore them. Being so young, he knew she’d never be happy living in the very desolate country-lifestyle that was Napa Valley at the turn of the century, so he built her a grand house, “Thurston House” in San Francisco; at the time it was marveled as being the grandest house in the country, comparable to the Castles of Europe. After the wedding, she made his life miserable, as well as, the life of his staff & friends. Even though Danielle Steele emphasizes what a “victim” Thurston is to Camille, my sympathies were limited towards him. There was moments of abuse, he raped her (which resulted in her pregnancy, something she was adamantly against. But he thought she’d grow out of that mindset), eventually she cheated & left him to move to Paris. He never divorced her (so you knew she was going to show up later in the novel with more malicious intent) & raised his daughter, Sabrina, to believe she had died when Sabrina was a baby.
Books 2 &3 are about Sabrina’s early & later years. I really, really liked what Danielle Steel did with this character. Talk about a ball-buster! Thurston mines are beyond booming & grape vineyards are added into the mix. Biggest mining-industry in the country, rivaled only to that by their arch-rival the Harte mines. The first few chapters are about Sabrina coming-of-age as a late teenager & when her father unexpectedly passes away, Sabrina takes on the challenge of managing the mines & vineyards. This is pre-WW1 era, she’s a female & is 18 to boot. Needless to say, she had to grow a huge pair! I loved the chapters how she toughened up & had to fight her way to keep her father’s business afloat. It was no surprise that, eventually, she fell in love with the owner of her arch-rival, John Harte, married & settled into a more relaxed life with her running the vineyards (her real passion) & him running the mines. They have a child together, Jonathan, but she once again finds herself alone when John dies tragically in a train accident.
She raises John, as I imagine any child in that situation would be raised, as spoiled ROTTEN. He’s showing the same character traits of Camille & Steel brilliantly brought her character back to life through Jonathon (although, spoiling him obsessively to make up for Sabrina’s lack of being involved in his life probably didn’t help!), eventually through a series of events Jonathon (as an adult) is introduced to Camille, realizes it is his Grandma & connivingly brings her back into Thurston House to take over Sabrina’s life & money (because he’s mad his mom didn’t buy him a new car). I wish that part of the story would’ve drug out longer because I really enjoyed it, but it only lasted a few chapters.
During Book 3, Sabrina loses the mines, is forced to sell most of her belongings & is only able to hold onto the vineyards, which she only manages to stay afloat when she’s introduced to Andre & Antoine; father & son wine-makers from France who help build up her wine-empire. Eventually, she marries Andre & they have a daughter together, Dominique.
Plenty of secondary-characters are throughout this novel: Mary Ellen, Spring Moon, Dan Richfield, Hannah, Amelia, & Arden whom are all instrumental in the shaping of events. Typical Danielle Steel style, she uses the backdrop of history to give a personal feel to the story; WW1 & 2, the Great Depression, the California Gold-Rush & hot debatable topics; domestic abuse, rape, women’s rights, abortion, even religion & divorce. When you mix that with late 19th/early 20th century ideals it can create an interesting story!
I definitely recommend this novel, even if you’re not a Danielle Steel fan (it does have some romance) it’s a heavy book & not necessarily a light read. Its full of lots of history & hot debatable topics. It’ll piss you off, it’ll make you smile, & some parts will make you laugh at the absurdity of that time-period’s thinking. It’s one of her early ones (circa 1985), but still a good find for me (.99 at a used-bookstore…score!).
Thurston House is the story of Jeremiah Thurston & the legacy that he built. It’s divided into 3 different “books”. I’m a sucker for a good, epic, Historical-fiction novel & this one fit the bill. At over 500pages, it’ll take you awhile to get through, but it will hold your interest.
Book 1 introduces you to Jeremiah Thurston; Napa Valley, CA, 1860. She opens the novel with laying down the foundation that the rest of the epic is built upon. Thurston is a small-time owner of a quicksilver mine beginning his life with his young bride. A lost-battle with influenza takes the life of his bride & he spends the next several decades in bachelor-dom, building up his mining empire. Alone with his housekeeper (Hannah), she becomes the mother-figure he never had & she, in turn, becomes a pivotal character in the novel. On a cross-country train ride to Atlanta, middle-aged Thurston meets Amelia & falls immediately in-love, however, its not reciprocated & a strong friendship is built that, also, transpires throughout the rest of the novel. Once in Atlanta, he meets the (very) young , 17year old Camilia Beauchamp & she quickly becomes his wife.
Now I LOVE a good villain in a novel…love them! I have a weakness for nastiness, debauchery, bitchiness, arrogance, vile, great villain characters (no surprise my favorite movie characters are; Wicked Witch of the West, the Evil Queen in Snow White, Cruella DeVille from 101 Dalmatians. They just make things “interesting” *insert maniacal “wa-ha-ha” laugh*). Camille definitely falls under the category of “villain”. Evil! Right from the beginning she weaseled her way into Jeremiah’s heart (as only a young girl can do to a middle-aged man), he’s beyond loaded with money & she is the quintessential “gold-digger”. He even had clues prior to the wedding that she had ulterior motives, but chose to ignore them. Being so young, he knew she’d never be happy living in the very desolate country-lifestyle that was Napa Valley at the turn of the century, so he built her a grand house, “Thurston House” in San Francisco; at the time it was marveled as being the grandest house in the country, comparable to the Castles of Europe. After the wedding, she made his life miserable, as well as, the life of his staff & friends. Even though Danielle Steele emphasizes what a “victim” Thurston is to Camille, my sympathies were limited towards him. There was moments of abuse, he raped her (which resulted in her pregnancy, something she was adamantly against. But he thought she’d grow out of that mindset), eventually she cheated & left him to move to Paris. He never divorced her (so you knew she was going to show up later in the novel with more malicious intent) & raised his daughter, Sabrina, to believe she had died when Sabrina was a baby.
Books 2 &3 are about Sabrina’s early & later years. I really, really liked what Danielle Steel did with this character. Talk about a ball-buster! Thurston mines are beyond booming & grape vineyards are added into the mix. Biggest mining-industry in the country, rivaled only to that by their arch-rival the Harte mines. The first few chapters are about Sabrina coming-of-age as a late teenager & when her father unexpectedly passes away, Sabrina takes on the challenge of managing the mines & vineyards. This is pre-WW1 era, she’s a female & is 18 to boot. Needless to say, she had to grow a huge pair! I loved the chapters how she toughened up & had to fight her way to keep her father’s business afloat. It was no surprise that, eventually, she fell in love with the owner of her arch-rival, John Harte, married & settled into a more relaxed life with her running the vineyards (her real passion) & him running the mines. They have a child together, Jonathan, but she once again finds herself alone when John dies tragically in a train accident.
She raises John, as I imagine any child in that situation would be raised, as spoiled ROTTEN. He’s showing the same character traits of Camille & Steel brilliantly brought her character back to life through Jonathon (although, spoiling him obsessively to make up for Sabrina’s lack of being involved in his life probably didn’t help!), eventually through a series of events Jonathon (as an adult) is introduced to Camille, realizes it is his Grandma & connivingly brings her back into Thurston House to take over Sabrina’s life & money (because he’s mad his mom didn’t buy him a new car). I wish that part of the story would’ve drug out longer because I really enjoyed it, but it only lasted a few chapters.
During Book 3, Sabrina loses the mines, is forced to sell most of her belongings & is only able to hold onto the vineyards, which she only manages to stay afloat when she’s introduced to Andre & Antoine; father & son wine-makers from France who help build up her wine-empire. Eventually, she marries Andre & they have a daughter together, Dominique.
Plenty of secondary-characters are throughout this novel: Mary Ellen, Spring Moon, Dan Richfield, Hannah, Amelia, & Arden whom are all instrumental in the shaping of events. Typical Danielle Steel style, she uses the backdrop of history to give a personal feel to the story; WW1 & 2, the Great Depression, the California Gold-Rush & hot debatable topics; domestic abuse, rape, women’s rights, abortion, even religion & divorce. When you mix that with late 19th/early 20th century ideals it can create an interesting story!
I definitely recommend this novel, even if you’re not a Danielle Steel fan (it does have some romance) it’s a heavy book & not necessarily a light read. Its full of lots of history & hot debatable topics. It’ll piss you off, it’ll make you smile, & some parts will make you laugh at the absurdity of that time-period’s thinking. It’s one of her early ones (circa 1985), but still a good find for me (.99 at a used-bookstore…score!).
July 14, 2012
If you are looking for a book that TRULY takes you on a journey, this is the one... in true Danielle Steel fashion, she takes you through generations of turmoil, heartbreak and PAIN, but you cannot put it down... its wonderfully written and worth the time to push through it... I read it in one weekend while in Napa Valley (where the book is based), and it was both awesome and depressing (but in a good way)... Highly Recommend!!
November 18, 2013
As the book begins, Jeremiah Thurston is the richest man in California, having made a fortune with the land and mines in Napa Valley he inherited from his father. Jeremiah had planned to marry when he was younger, but she died and a close friend finally convinces him it's time for a wife and an heir. He meets a very young southern belle during a business trip, and despite the huge gap in their ages it seems to be a love match. Or at least Jeremiah's dumb enough to think it is and he builds her a huge mansion in San Francisco and brings his young bride home (home should be Napa Valley, but Camille's having none of that).
Well just as quick as you can guess where this part of the storyline is going . The second part is the daughter's story, as she has to work in a man's world to carry on her father's business concerns. Just as quick as you can guess where that part of the storyline is going .
Part three happens years later when the son has grown up to be a spoiled snot-nosed young punk who thinks he deserves every privilege even when times are tough, and just as soon as you can guess where this part of the storyline is headed, he .
The end. Don't bother.
Well just as quick as you can guess where this part of the storyline is going . The second part is the daughter's story, as she has to work in a man's world to carry on her father's business concerns. Just as quick as you can guess where that part of the storyline is going .
Part three happens years later when the son has grown up to be a spoiled snot-nosed young punk who thinks he deserves every privilege even when times are tough, and just as soon as you can guess where this part of the storyline is headed, he .
The end. Don't bother.
February 28, 2013
This was my first novel I ever read many (many) years ago. It was this book that got me hooked on reading! I laughed, cried, even got angry only to laugh out loud again. Thinking I might read it again.
March 6, 2017
I can't remember how many times I have reread this book. Every second, every detail is just fantastic.
May 9, 2017
Posso dizer que abandonei por conta do início arrastado e monótono demais e quase sem diálogos... Acho que o lerei novamente e posso mudar de opinião...
September 9, 2021
Late review.
It's been a long time since I read this, couldn't remember the whole story. But when I saw the blurb, I remembered Jeremiah taking care of his infant daughter while tending to his business. Then a lot of tragedy has happened but in the end, Jeremiah survived all of it with his daughter beside him. He was a great father and a good boss.
The Thurston House was built during the 1800s. It was once the grandest house in the city and lots of memories. And I think him and the heroine tried to refurbished the house.
This is a good book. Lots of turmoils, but in the end, a feel-good book.
Adding this to my reread list.
It's been a long time since I read this, couldn't remember the whole story. But when I saw the blurb, I remembered Jeremiah taking care of his infant daughter while tending to his business. Then a lot of tragedy has happened but in the end, Jeremiah survived all of it with his daughter beside him. He was a great father and a good boss.
The Thurston House was built during the 1800s. It was once the grandest house in the city and lots of memories. And I think him and the heroine tried to refurbished the house.
This is a good book. Lots of turmoils, but in the end, a feel-good book.
Adding this to my reread list.
February 8, 2012
I really liked this book. It took place in the late 1800's, early 1900's. This book really made you love the character of Jeremiah and you were sad to see him die. The one thing that was hard to believe was how Sabrina lost both mines and ended up broke. I knew Camille would show up eventually, but I'm surprised Sabrina's son Jonathon turned out like he did. Really good book though.
February 22, 2016
I loved this story!
June 24, 2023
Lumbering, meandering, but mostly entertaining saga of a California mining & wining dynasty. This sweeping soaper features a series of dramatic child births, a smattering of natural disasters, and ludicrously noble, understanding mistresses. Wedged into all of this is, of course, the Courage To Love Again and Steel’s rigid ideas about what makes a decent person and life well lived (it always involves procreating).
But, as usual in Steel’s work, it’s the greedy, grasping, child-hating, trouble-making villains I identify and sympathize with most of all.
But, as usual in Steel’s work, it’s the greedy, grasping, child-hating, trouble-making villains I identify and sympathize with most of all.
July 30, 2025
La maison des jours heureux mais aussi des jours pluvieux un histoire qui pourraient se continuer encore et encore au fil des générations. Une histoire qui se lit facilement malgré quelques scènes un peu dures et une fin qui laisse libre cours à notre imagination.
January 29, 2020
I've been a Danielle Steel fan since I was in the 6th grade. Ms. Steel brings me a level of comfort I very much enjoy while reading her books. As the years have worn on and my taste in books has changed, I've noticed that her newer books are all the same. She basically writes out a timeline and then fills in the blanks with lots and lots of sentences that begin with "and" and "but", and a lot of repetitive sentences that her editor either doesn't care about, or doesn't see. My belief is the former. I'm always a fan of the stories, and her characters, just not always her newer writing style. Maybe she has ghost writers and that's how she churns out so many books a year? That's believable to me, because I can always tell when she's had a bigger hand in writing her newer books or not. (i.e. Pegasus)
With all that being said, the earlier books by Ms. Steel are excellent. My favorites are Granny Dan and Zoya. I keep a few of the older ones out there for me to read, because they are typically excellent.
Thurston House was no exception. She weaved a story spanning generations and decades that was heartbreakingly beautiful. I was in love with Jeremiah Thurston and then with Sabrina Thurston Harte, and even from the beginning, I loved John Harte. I wanted to know what happened and I felt all of Jeremaiah's heartbreaks, as well as his daughter's. Ms. Steel did a beautiful job with this story and all 500+ pages grabbed me. I wish she still wrote like this, because books like Thurston House are why I am still a Danielle Steel fan.
With all that being said, the earlier books by Ms. Steel are excellent. My favorites are Granny Dan and Zoya. I keep a few of the older ones out there for me to read, because they are typically excellent.
Thurston House was no exception. She weaved a story spanning generations and decades that was heartbreakingly beautiful. I was in love with Jeremiah Thurston and then with Sabrina Thurston Harte, and even from the beginning, I loved John Harte. I wanted to know what happened and I felt all of Jeremaiah's heartbreaks, as well as his daughter's. Ms. Steel did a beautiful job with this story and all 500+ pages grabbed me. I wish she still wrote like this, because books like Thurston House are why I am still a Danielle Steel fan.
December 6, 2019
Todo el tiempo odié al personaje principal, porque era machista y obligó a su esposa a dejar de usar protección para que le diera un hijo, la violó y aún así la culpó de no querer a "su propia hija." Romantizan este tipo de personaje masculino posesivo, por ser guapo, rico y soltero. Dejando como la mala a la pobre Camila, que sufría de violencia y fue víctima de abuso en su matrimonio. Aparte que él era como 20 años mayor que ella. Le terminó arruinando la vida a Camila.
Está muy marcado el machismo en esta novela y no me gustó para nada.
Es interesante hasta la mitad del libro, la segunda mitad, en donde la protagonista es la hija, está de más.
Está muy marcado el machismo en esta novela y no me gustó para nada.
Es interesante hasta la mitad del libro, la segunda mitad, en donde la protagonista es la hija, está de más.
February 26, 2017
De vez en cuando me apetece leer a Danielle Steel, sus historias son sencillas y con finales felices, pero con este libro me costó un poco terminarlo, la historia decae por momentos, se hace aburrida y demasiado cursi. En cuanto a los personajes Jeremiah es tan bueno que por momentos parece tonto y Amelia es odiosa y repelente a más no poder. Para mí le sobran páginas al libro. Primer libro que no me gusta de la autora.
May 3, 2019
800 million books sold worldwide. That was the reason I used to justify reading Danielle Steel. Now I can rest in peace... NOt my cup of tea at all, the drama and the strict moral grounds it's just too much for me. As someone who believes in writing and literature and as a writer I felt like I should give it a try and so I did. Now I can say that I really dislike this author and this type of literature. :(
February 14, 2009
I've read almost every book that Danielle Steel has written. This though is my absolute favorite. I re-read this every 2 or 3 years. Family history, spans over a couple generations. Just fabulous!
February 22, 2009
This was the very first Danielle Steele book I read...I could not put the book down!!! Hence....new addiction: DANIELLE STEELE NOVELS!!!!!
Read
August 12, 2011nice beach book
February 9, 2015
My very first Danielle Steele novel. I loved it! I should read it again to see if it holds up!
September 15, 2021
Always my favorite
I first read Thurston House over 20 years ago as a teen. Now I read it every year, just like I haven't a hundred times before.
I first read Thurston House over 20 years ago as a teen. Now I read it every year, just like I haven't a hundred times before.
Read
November 3, 2016Jeremiah Arbuckle Thurston was 43 yrs. old. He began mining with his father when he was 17 yrs old. His mother had died on the trip to California. He and his father mined for gold and then silver when the gold ran out. His father died when he was 19 and left Jeremiah a fortune. At 25, he met Jennie and they soon became engaged. He built Jennie a house in Napa, CA. Unfortunately, Jennie died during a flu epidemic. Most of the rooms were closed up, empty. Jeremiah lived in the house but was rarely home.
Hannah was the wife of one of the miners who had also died during the flu outbreak. She showed up one day and told him that he needed a housekeeper and she was still with him. Hannah constantly reminded Jeremiah that he needed to find a wife. Jeremiah had accepted the fact that he was going to remain alone and saw a woman, Mary Ellen, every Saturday night. Their relationship lasted 7 years.
One night one of his miners came to the house and told him of John Harte, the owner of another mine, who had lost some men due to recent flu outbreak. John had just lost his wife and baby daughter. His son was also very sick. Jeremiah went to him immediately and wept with him when his son died. John was appreciative of the support. John stayed drunk for about a week and returned to work with a chip on his shoulder. He was now harder on his men. He wasn't well liked before and things got even worse after the loss. Jeremiah continued to be there for him when the winter floods came and men were trapped in the mines. Both Jeremiah and John lost men during the winter floods and to occasional flu outbreaks.
Jeremiah got a proposal for a silver purchase from a man in Atlanta, Orville Beauchamp. A boy named Dan Richmond drove the wagon that took him to the train and Orville told him that he would teach him how to keep the books for the mine if he would come to work with him on Saturday's upon his return. Dan didn't want to work in the mines like his father. During the week-long train ride he met a woman named Amelia Goodheart. She was in her early forties and Jeremiah spent most of his week on the train in her company. He fell for her and offered her marriage. She was a widow who had three grown children and she told him that he needed to find a younger woman to love who could still give him children. After realizing that he could fall in love again and seeing the pain in John Harte after losing his family, Jeremiah began to realize that he wanted a family for himself. They parted but remained friends and saw each other when he was in New York or she when came to California every year to visit her daughter they became lovers for a time when he was much older.
Jeremiah was successful in his transaction with Orville Beauchamp and met his 17 year old daughter, Camille. They fell in love even with their age difference. Jeremiah went back home and returned 4 months later to ask her to marry him. She quickly agreed. Her parents were happy for her because they knew the wealth of Jeremiah and that she would be treated well. Camille was smart and her mother was of Southern aristocracy. Her father wasn't and knew that Camille would never totally fit in with the Southerners because of him. Camille would be accepted in California in a way she never was in the South.
Jeremiah had a house built for Camille in San Francisco christened Thurston House. This was the house he brought her to when they were married and she loved it. He eventually took her to Napa where his other house was and she heard the stories of him building the house for a former fiancée. She hated that house.
Jeremiah began to notice that Camille was hateful to others she felt were beneath her. One of those people was Hannah. Camille didn't want children and expected to be able to help Jeremiah with his business once they married. Jeremiah wanted children and didn't know that Camille was using birth control until Hannah told him.
Hannah had told Jeremiah before he married that Mary Ellen had gotten herself pregnant before they separated. It was about a month after they were married when Hannah told Jeremiah that Mary Ellen was in labor. He went to see her and she barely survived. The baby boy was stillborn. Camille found out and was very angry but she got over it due to the parties and gifts given to her by Jeremiah.
Jeremiah confronted Camille about the birth control after Hannah found the device. Jeremiah destroyed the rings and had sex with her. She became pregnant and was sick. Jeremiah insisted she move to Napa so she would not be so busy. They returned to San Francisco toward the end of her pregnancy. She started her labor pains early and a doctor could not be located. Jeremiah had to turn the baby inside her and she delivered a baby girl. Camille insisted that she would never have another child and had little to do with Jeremiah after the birth and nothing to do with the baby. Jeremiah was left to decide on a name for their daughter. He chose Sabrina.
Camille returned to the social life she had in San Francisco. During one of Jeremiah's trips to Napa, Camille met a Frenchman and ended up running off with him. Jeremiah closed up Thurston House and told everyone that Camille had died of the flu since there was another outbreak. Only he and Hannah knew the truth. Jeremiah was heartbroken for he was still very much in love with Camille. Camille's father disowned her as well. Though he did find out where she was and visited her shortly before died. She was living in squalor but still refused to return to the states with him and leave her lover.
Jeremiah and Hannah raised Sabrina. It was discovered that he had heart trouble and he still saw Amelia when he could. They had become lovers and Sabrina really liked her. Sabrina grew up knowing very little of her mother. She figured out that her and Hannah hated each other. Her father seemed tormented so she didn't want to bring the subject up and ask him questions.
Jeremiah promised Sabrina Thurston house and he agreed re-open it up for her 18th birthday. They arrived in San Franciso three weeks before her birthday. There was an earthquake and most of San Francisco burned during that time. Jeremiah was on a committee that was formed to try and figure out how to stop the fires and restore what had been burned. It was exhausting work and his heart couldn't take the stress. He went to sleep one night at this desk and never woke up. Sabrina returned home to bury her father without ever having her birthday party.
Dan Richmond expected to be given control of Jeremiah's mines and in control, he would convince Sabrina to sell the mines to John Harte. That didn't happen. Sabrina knew as much about running the mines and was better at business than her father had been. The day that she announced she would continue to run the mines, the workers walked out. Dan tried to rape her that night but she pulled a gun on him and forced him to leave. He left and went to work for John Harte. John came by a few times in order to offer to purchase the mines but Sabrina continued to hold out. She eventually hired enough new workers to replace the ones that had left. She was doing quite well. John's mines had a really bad fire and Sabrina and her men came to help. John gained a new respect for Sabrina.
Sabrina needed a break and went to San Francisco. She ran into John Harte there and they started talking. He agreed to not offer to buy her out. They ended up spending most of the day together and decided that they could become friends. Sabrina found it comforting to have someone to talk to and share things with. John came to love Sabrina although he was 28 years older than she was. After the fire in his mines, he came to see her and told her that he wanted to marry her. They had been friends for a while and she thought that it might be a good idea. She was getting worn out running the mines. He was the first man that she had ever been close to outside of her father. John agreed to let her keep her mines and his separate. She agreed to teach him how she ran her mines and she wanted to concentrate more on the vineyards which was where her interest was. She taught him how she ran her side of the business in prepartion for him taking over. She told him about Dan attempting to rape her and John agreed to fire him from his mines. John fired him and Dan tried to rape Sabrina again. He was killed by a knife being thrust through his heart by John's Indian mistress. Sabrina felt lucky that she was around when Dan made his attempt.
Sabrina and John were married two months after Dan was killed. John put his Indian mistress on a train back to her home in South Dakota before Dan's body was found so that she would not be questioned or punished for what she had done.
Sabrina and John wanted children and they were getting worried that it might not happen. They were married for almost two years before Sabrina got pregnant. She quit working at the mines and spent most of her time around the house. Then there came a day when fires broke out at both mines. She wanted to go with John but her told her to stay at home and not risk the pregnancy. She waited four days and could wait no longer. She went to find out that John was trapped in one of the mine shafts. She worked with the miners to get him and others out. John took her home but she had lost the baby and was heart broken. She didn't think she would have another child. On their fourth anniversary, she began to feel sick again. She was pregnant and this time stayed close to home and did very little. She delivered her son six days late and he was born the day war was declared in Europe against the Germans. Jonathan didn't look like either her or John. Hannah knew that he looked just like Camille. Jon was two years old when they received a note from Spring Moon's brother telling them that she had fallen off a bridge and died. They were both very sad and remembered her saving Sabrina from Dan.
John had a business trip to take in New York and Sabrina had to stay home with Jon because it would have been too much to be on a train for 10 days with him. Sabrina waited in San Francisco for his return. She was in town when she noticed a boy selling newspapers that told of a train wreck in Ogden, UT. John was on that train and she was soon notified that he had died when the car he was riding in fell off the tracks into a ravine.
It was a month before the foremen from both mines came to her and she realized that she had to return to work. She left them in charge of the mines and made the decision to merge them into the Thurston-Harte mines. She made a fortune during the war and the Harte mine quickly played out. She sold the mine and lost all that money she had invested when the stock market crashed and the depression was on. She was spending all of her time at the mine and her son came to resent her.
Jon and Sabrina didn't have much of a relationship as he grew older. He wanted more than Sabrina was able to give him. She struggled with keeping the knowledge of her finances away from him. He just wanted more and more from her. He was accepted at Harvard and she sold the house in Napa to pay for his first two years of college. He wanted a car. She found out that he was failing his first semester there and told him to get his grades up or she was cutting him off. He came to spend less and less time at home and still wanted a car from her and expected her to pay for him to go to Europe. She sold her mines to pay for another year of his college. She told him to get a job and he told her to get one herself. She sold what she could of her possessions and was thinking of selling Thurston house. It was all she had left except for the vineyards in Napa. Prohibition had been on for 14 years and she couldn't sell the land. It was worthless and overgrown even though prohibition was now ended.
Amelia and her father had stayed close. She was the closest thing to a mother that Sabrina had and she told Sabrina a friend of hers from France was coming to see her for advice on purchasing land in Napa to grow grapes for wine production. His name was Andre' de Vernay. The day he came to Thurston house, Sabrina was in the yard trimming hedges and looked a mess. They had tea together and he was impressed by her knowledge. She agreed to show him Napa and offer him her advice. He ended up purchasing three thousand acres adjoining hers and talked her into purchasing an additional 800 acres so they had a combined total of 6,000 acres and became partners in making wine and very good friends.
Camille showed up and forced herself into Thurston house and after 6 months of pestering Sabrina, they went to court where Camille lost her claim of interest in the house. Camille didn't want the house. She wanted Sabrina to buy her out so she could have money. Sabrina discovered that Jon had met Camille 3 years previously while in college and that he had orchestrated the attempt with the promise that Camille would buy him the car he wanted so badly.
A year after they met, Andre and Sabrina became lovers. They were keeping the relationship between themselves at first. She was surprised to discover that she was pregnant because it had taken her so long when she was married to John. Now she was 48 and pregnant. She attempted to abort the baby but Andre found out and he asked her to marry him right away. Andre's son, Antonie was supportive where her own was not. They saw very little of Jon. He was living in New York and working for a wealthy banker. Jon was dating his employers daughter, Arden, off and on. Arden was completely taken in by Jon. Jon dated other women and was constantly partying with Bill, Arden's brother.
Their daughter, Dominique, was born and Jon made snide remarks hinting that he knew that she had married when she was two months pregnant. They had told Antoine the truth and he was thrilled. He was very protective of Sabrina and liked her very much. He loved Dominique.
Jon, Bill and Arden came to visit and Jon they often went out leaving Arden at the house. She and Antoine spent a lot of time together playing with the baby.
Jon was taking advantage of the family he was working for and dating Arden in order to keep from working. He eventually married her. He had no interest in having children and was not upset when Arden lost their baby. He didn't understand why Arden was so unhappy.
Antoine was in love with Arden but had backed off when Arden told him that she was in love with Jon. Sabrina was not happy about the relationship between Arden and her son. She wanted Antonio to get what he wanted for once in his life. She was very disappointed in the behavior of her son. Jon continued to cheat on Arden and partied often. Sabrina felt sorry for her. She didn't know what to do to help and Andre told her just to stay out of it.
Andre and Antonio had left France due to the threat of war and Antonio went back to visit and told Andre that if war broke out he was leaving. Antonio enlisted when the war began. He came back to visit and see Dominique as often as he could. He got shot and was given an office job. That was of some relief to Andre and Sabrina. Pearl Harbor was bombed and both Jon and Arden's brother, Bill, got drunk one night and enlisted. Jon came with Arden to California and Arden moved in with Sabrina. Jon was sent overseas and was killed. Arden had discovered that she was pregnant shortly after Jon died and had quickly miscarried. She had recovered quickly.
Sabrina and Arden talked about Antoine coming home and the fact that Antoine was in love with Arden before she married Jon. She mentioned that she almost fell in love with him too.
Sabrina returned to Thurston House to place a plaque on the house for Jonathon along with the one by her father and her husband. She told Arden that a plaque with her name would one day be on the house, along with Andre, Antoine and possibly her own. The house would one day belong to Dominique eventually and she hoped that she would love the house as much as she did.
Hannah was the wife of one of the miners who had also died during the flu outbreak. She showed up one day and told him that he needed a housekeeper and she was still with him. Hannah constantly reminded Jeremiah that he needed to find a wife. Jeremiah had accepted the fact that he was going to remain alone and saw a woman, Mary Ellen, every Saturday night. Their relationship lasted 7 years.
One night one of his miners came to the house and told him of John Harte, the owner of another mine, who had lost some men due to recent flu outbreak. John had just lost his wife and baby daughter. His son was also very sick. Jeremiah went to him immediately and wept with him when his son died. John was appreciative of the support. John stayed drunk for about a week and returned to work with a chip on his shoulder. He was now harder on his men. He wasn't well liked before and things got even worse after the loss. Jeremiah continued to be there for him when the winter floods came and men were trapped in the mines. Both Jeremiah and John lost men during the winter floods and to occasional flu outbreaks.
Jeremiah got a proposal for a silver purchase from a man in Atlanta, Orville Beauchamp. A boy named Dan Richmond drove the wagon that took him to the train and Orville told him that he would teach him how to keep the books for the mine if he would come to work with him on Saturday's upon his return. Dan didn't want to work in the mines like his father. During the week-long train ride he met a woman named Amelia Goodheart. She was in her early forties and Jeremiah spent most of his week on the train in her company. He fell for her and offered her marriage. She was a widow who had three grown children and she told him that he needed to find a younger woman to love who could still give him children. After realizing that he could fall in love again and seeing the pain in John Harte after losing his family, Jeremiah began to realize that he wanted a family for himself. They parted but remained friends and saw each other when he was in New York or she when came to California every year to visit her daughter they became lovers for a time when he was much older.
Jeremiah was successful in his transaction with Orville Beauchamp and met his 17 year old daughter, Camille. They fell in love even with their age difference. Jeremiah went back home and returned 4 months later to ask her to marry him. She quickly agreed. Her parents were happy for her because they knew the wealth of Jeremiah and that she would be treated well. Camille was smart and her mother was of Southern aristocracy. Her father wasn't and knew that Camille would never totally fit in with the Southerners because of him. Camille would be accepted in California in a way she never was in the South.
Jeremiah had a house built for Camille in San Francisco christened Thurston House. This was the house he brought her to when they were married and she loved it. He eventually took her to Napa where his other house was and she heard the stories of him building the house for a former fiancée. She hated that house.
Jeremiah began to notice that Camille was hateful to others she felt were beneath her. One of those people was Hannah. Camille didn't want children and expected to be able to help Jeremiah with his business once they married. Jeremiah wanted children and didn't know that Camille was using birth control until Hannah told him.
Hannah had told Jeremiah before he married that Mary Ellen had gotten herself pregnant before they separated. It was about a month after they were married when Hannah told Jeremiah that Mary Ellen was in labor. He went to see her and she barely survived. The baby boy was stillborn. Camille found out and was very angry but she got over it due to the parties and gifts given to her by Jeremiah.
Jeremiah confronted Camille about the birth control after Hannah found the device. Jeremiah destroyed the rings and had sex with her. She became pregnant and was sick. Jeremiah insisted she move to Napa so she would not be so busy. They returned to San Francisco toward the end of her pregnancy. She started her labor pains early and a doctor could not be located. Jeremiah had to turn the baby inside her and she delivered a baby girl. Camille insisted that she would never have another child and had little to do with Jeremiah after the birth and nothing to do with the baby. Jeremiah was left to decide on a name for their daughter. He chose Sabrina.
Camille returned to the social life she had in San Francisco. During one of Jeremiah's trips to Napa, Camille met a Frenchman and ended up running off with him. Jeremiah closed up Thurston House and told everyone that Camille had died of the flu since there was another outbreak. Only he and Hannah knew the truth. Jeremiah was heartbroken for he was still very much in love with Camille. Camille's father disowned her as well. Though he did find out where she was and visited her shortly before died. She was living in squalor but still refused to return to the states with him and leave her lover.
Jeremiah and Hannah raised Sabrina. It was discovered that he had heart trouble and he still saw Amelia when he could. They had become lovers and Sabrina really liked her. Sabrina grew up knowing very little of her mother. She figured out that her and Hannah hated each other. Her father seemed tormented so she didn't want to bring the subject up and ask him questions.
Jeremiah promised Sabrina Thurston house and he agreed re-open it up for her 18th birthday. They arrived in San Franciso three weeks before her birthday. There was an earthquake and most of San Francisco burned during that time. Jeremiah was on a committee that was formed to try and figure out how to stop the fires and restore what had been burned. It was exhausting work and his heart couldn't take the stress. He went to sleep one night at this desk and never woke up. Sabrina returned home to bury her father without ever having her birthday party.
Dan Richmond expected to be given control of Jeremiah's mines and in control, he would convince Sabrina to sell the mines to John Harte. That didn't happen. Sabrina knew as much about running the mines and was better at business than her father had been. The day that she announced she would continue to run the mines, the workers walked out. Dan tried to rape her that night but she pulled a gun on him and forced him to leave. He left and went to work for John Harte. John came by a few times in order to offer to purchase the mines but Sabrina continued to hold out. She eventually hired enough new workers to replace the ones that had left. She was doing quite well. John's mines had a really bad fire and Sabrina and her men came to help. John gained a new respect for Sabrina.
Sabrina needed a break and went to San Francisco. She ran into John Harte there and they started talking. He agreed to not offer to buy her out. They ended up spending most of the day together and decided that they could become friends. Sabrina found it comforting to have someone to talk to and share things with. John came to love Sabrina although he was 28 years older than she was. After the fire in his mines, he came to see her and told her that he wanted to marry her. They had been friends for a while and she thought that it might be a good idea. She was getting worn out running the mines. He was the first man that she had ever been close to outside of her father. John agreed to let her keep her mines and his separate. She agreed to teach him how she ran her mines and she wanted to concentrate more on the vineyards which was where her interest was. She taught him how she ran her side of the business in prepartion for him taking over. She told him about Dan attempting to rape her and John agreed to fire him from his mines. John fired him and Dan tried to rape Sabrina again. He was killed by a knife being thrust through his heart by John's Indian mistress. Sabrina felt lucky that she was around when Dan made his attempt.
Sabrina and John were married two months after Dan was killed. John put his Indian mistress on a train back to her home in South Dakota before Dan's body was found so that she would not be questioned or punished for what she had done.
Sabrina and John wanted children and they were getting worried that it might not happen. They were married for almost two years before Sabrina got pregnant. She quit working at the mines and spent most of her time around the house. Then there came a day when fires broke out at both mines. She wanted to go with John but her told her to stay at home and not risk the pregnancy. She waited four days and could wait no longer. She went to find out that John was trapped in one of the mine shafts. She worked with the miners to get him and others out. John took her home but she had lost the baby and was heart broken. She didn't think she would have another child. On their fourth anniversary, she began to feel sick again. She was pregnant and this time stayed close to home and did very little. She delivered her son six days late and he was born the day war was declared in Europe against the Germans. Jonathan didn't look like either her or John. Hannah knew that he looked just like Camille. Jon was two years old when they received a note from Spring Moon's brother telling them that she had fallen off a bridge and died. They were both very sad and remembered her saving Sabrina from Dan.
John had a business trip to take in New York and Sabrina had to stay home with Jon because it would have been too much to be on a train for 10 days with him. Sabrina waited in San Francisco for his return. She was in town when she noticed a boy selling newspapers that told of a train wreck in Ogden, UT. John was on that train and she was soon notified that he had died when the car he was riding in fell off the tracks into a ravine.
It was a month before the foremen from both mines came to her and she realized that she had to return to work. She left them in charge of the mines and made the decision to merge them into the Thurston-Harte mines. She made a fortune during the war and the Harte mine quickly played out. She sold the mine and lost all that money she had invested when the stock market crashed and the depression was on. She was spending all of her time at the mine and her son came to resent her.
Jon and Sabrina didn't have much of a relationship as he grew older. He wanted more than Sabrina was able to give him. She struggled with keeping the knowledge of her finances away from him. He just wanted more and more from her. He was accepted at Harvard and she sold the house in Napa to pay for his first two years of college. He wanted a car. She found out that he was failing his first semester there and told him to get his grades up or she was cutting him off. He came to spend less and less time at home and still wanted a car from her and expected her to pay for him to go to Europe. She sold her mines to pay for another year of his college. She told him to get a job and he told her to get one herself. She sold what she could of her possessions and was thinking of selling Thurston house. It was all she had left except for the vineyards in Napa. Prohibition had been on for 14 years and she couldn't sell the land. It was worthless and overgrown even though prohibition was now ended.
Amelia and her father had stayed close. She was the closest thing to a mother that Sabrina had and she told Sabrina a friend of hers from France was coming to see her for advice on purchasing land in Napa to grow grapes for wine production. His name was Andre' de Vernay. The day he came to Thurston house, Sabrina was in the yard trimming hedges and looked a mess. They had tea together and he was impressed by her knowledge. She agreed to show him Napa and offer him her advice. He ended up purchasing three thousand acres adjoining hers and talked her into purchasing an additional 800 acres so they had a combined total of 6,000 acres and became partners in making wine and very good friends.
Camille showed up and forced herself into Thurston house and after 6 months of pestering Sabrina, they went to court where Camille lost her claim of interest in the house. Camille didn't want the house. She wanted Sabrina to buy her out so she could have money. Sabrina discovered that Jon had met Camille 3 years previously while in college and that he had orchestrated the attempt with the promise that Camille would buy him the car he wanted so badly.
A year after they met, Andre and Sabrina became lovers. They were keeping the relationship between themselves at first. She was surprised to discover that she was pregnant because it had taken her so long when she was married to John. Now she was 48 and pregnant. She attempted to abort the baby but Andre found out and he asked her to marry him right away. Andre's son, Antonie was supportive where her own was not. They saw very little of Jon. He was living in New York and working for a wealthy banker. Jon was dating his employers daughter, Arden, off and on. Arden was completely taken in by Jon. Jon dated other women and was constantly partying with Bill, Arden's brother.
Their daughter, Dominique, was born and Jon made snide remarks hinting that he knew that she had married when she was two months pregnant. They had told Antoine the truth and he was thrilled. He was very protective of Sabrina and liked her very much. He loved Dominique.
Jon, Bill and Arden came to visit and Jon they often went out leaving Arden at the house. She and Antoine spent a lot of time together playing with the baby.
Jon was taking advantage of the family he was working for and dating Arden in order to keep from working. He eventually married her. He had no interest in having children and was not upset when Arden lost their baby. He didn't understand why Arden was so unhappy.
Antoine was in love with Arden but had backed off when Arden told him that she was in love with Jon. Sabrina was not happy about the relationship between Arden and her son. She wanted Antonio to get what he wanted for once in his life. She was very disappointed in the behavior of her son. Jon continued to cheat on Arden and partied often. Sabrina felt sorry for her. She didn't know what to do to help and Andre told her just to stay out of it.
Andre and Antonio had left France due to the threat of war and Antonio went back to visit and told Andre that if war broke out he was leaving. Antonio enlisted when the war began. He came back to visit and see Dominique as often as he could. He got shot and was given an office job. That was of some relief to Andre and Sabrina. Pearl Harbor was bombed and both Jon and Arden's brother, Bill, got drunk one night and enlisted. Jon came with Arden to California and Arden moved in with Sabrina. Jon was sent overseas and was killed. Arden had discovered that she was pregnant shortly after Jon died and had quickly miscarried. She had recovered quickly.
Sabrina and Arden talked about Antoine coming home and the fact that Antoine was in love with Arden before she married Jon. She mentioned that she almost fell in love with him too.
Sabrina returned to Thurston House to place a plaque on the house for Jonathon along with the one by her father and her husband. She told Arden that a plaque with her name would one day be on the house, along with Andre, Antoine and possibly her own. The house would one day belong to Dominique eventually and she hoped that she would love the house as much as she did.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 22, 2025
Cuando comencé el libro pensé en darle 5 estrellas, pero la historia fue cambiando tanto, que ya desde la página como 300 me obligué a terminarlo.
Al principió la historia de Jeremiah me gustó, pero ya cuando violó a su joven esposa solo para que tuvieran un hijo me pareció demasiado desagradable. Comprendo que lo que se quiso contar fue diversos puntos de vistas de todos los personajes, pero las decisiones tomadas fueron muy estúpidas.
Más adelante, cuando nos cuentan la vida de Sabrina, dirigiendo las empresas que le dejó su padre, aun cuando en aquella época no estaba bien visto ese tipo de comportamientos en mujeres, me siguió gustando, ya que las decisiones que tomaba esta mujer me parecían interesantes; ya para cuando entramos en la vida adulta de la misma... wow... demasiado aburrimiento. Es como si la escritora se hubiera obligado a escribir un libro demasiado largo, contando una historia totalmente innecesaria.
Y ni hablar del hijo de esta mujer... que si quieren odiar a un personaje, este tiene todo lo necesario para que lo odien sin que les quede nada por dentro.
Pero el final... ¡Madre mía! pensé que no podría ser peor, pero detesto los finales abiertos y me quedé con un mal sabor de boca. Necesitaba saber qué pasaría con cierto personaje, pero pufff, viene la escritora y acaba el libro así, sin más.
Qué les puedo decir. Dos estrellas porque no puedo darle 1/5
Al principió la historia de Jeremiah me gustó, pero ya cuando violó a su joven esposa solo para que tuvieran un hijo me pareció demasiado desagradable. Comprendo que lo que se quiso contar fue diversos puntos de vistas de todos los personajes, pero las decisiones tomadas fueron muy estúpidas.
Más adelante, cuando nos cuentan la vida de Sabrina, dirigiendo las empresas que le dejó su padre, aun cuando en aquella época no estaba bien visto ese tipo de comportamientos en mujeres, me siguió gustando, ya que las decisiones que tomaba esta mujer me parecían interesantes; ya para cuando entramos en la vida adulta de la misma... wow... demasiado aburrimiento. Es como si la escritora se hubiera obligado a escribir un libro demasiado largo, contando una historia totalmente innecesaria.
Y ni hablar del hijo de esta mujer... que si quieren odiar a un personaje, este tiene todo lo necesario para que lo odien sin que les quede nada por dentro.
Pero el final... ¡Madre mía! pensé que no podría ser peor, pero detesto los finales abiertos y me quedé con un mal sabor de boca. Necesitaba saber qué pasaría con cierto personaje, pero pufff, viene la escritora y acaba el libro así, sin más.
Qué les puedo decir. Dos estrellas porque no puedo darle 1/5
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 2, 2020
wow ... what an enjoyable story .. and the soft heart in me really got involved with this book's characters ! Most romantic novels start out with a main female character, but this time it was 'the man'.. Jeremiah Arbuckle Thurston, a hardworking miner and vintner hobbyist who in middle age found the love of his life and built this House in olde world San Francisco. It was the mid 1800s and this self-made mine baron wanted to give her the world and she some children.. But life has an odd way of turning the knife into the heart really deeply! A young southern belle with a quick mind and not a care in the world wanted all the trappings of an 'important wealthy man' but not all the responsibilities of a wife .. so much so that Jeremiah and baby Sabrina were abandoned for the next 40 plus years! Napa valley saw it's share of wealth and recession during these years but magnificent Thurston House time and time again became a sanctuary to revive and survive! Marriage for Sabrina was a blessing, but the son she bore had a mystifying resemblance to the past! But Thurston House still was able to survive and give solace and joy to its inhabitants, even with a French twist .........
May 8, 2018
The journey of a house in the hands of it's original builder Jeremiah who built it for the flash love he felt for his child bride Camille and finally their daughter Sabrina, who ends up loving the house as much as her father.
It's a compelling story about the strength of character and a never-say-die spirit. How, first the Father and then the daughter survive the cruelest blows of fate, loss of business, loved ones, heartbreaks and political turmoil yet continue to stand tall. I was totally hooked from the start and as the story developed, which it did gradually the story caught on my interest.
In one word "Loved it"
It's a compelling story about the strength of character and a never-say-die spirit. How, first the Father and then the daughter survive the cruelest blows of fate, loss of business, loved ones, heartbreaks and political turmoil yet continue to stand tall. I was totally hooked from the start and as the story developed, which it did gradually the story caught on my interest.
In one word "Loved it"
March 30, 2021
Rasanya nano-nano deh baca buku ini. Tokoh utamanya selalu ditimpa kesialan.
Dimulai dari Jeremiah, taipan kaya tapi salah memilih istri.
Lalu, Putrinya Sabrina.
Beneran hebat sih.
Hingga akhirnya ditinggal meninggal Jeremiah dan suaminya.
Anaknya salah asuhan.
Krisis dan saham jatuh, kesulitan keuangan juga.
Wow deh semuanya.
Tapi kenapa di endingnya harus nikah lagi sih? Rata2 cerita DS begitu.
Apakah tokoh utamanya tak bisa bahagia tanpa menikah lagi?
Single juga hepi loh mbak.
Dimulai dari Jeremiah, taipan kaya tapi salah memilih istri.
Lalu, Putrinya Sabrina.
Beneran hebat sih.
Hingga akhirnya ditinggal meninggal Jeremiah dan suaminya.
Anaknya salah asuhan.
Krisis dan saham jatuh, kesulitan keuangan juga.
Wow deh semuanya.
Tapi kenapa di endingnya harus nikah lagi sih? Rata2 cerita DS begitu.
Apakah tokoh utamanya tak bisa bahagia tanpa menikah lagi?
Single juga hepi loh mbak.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 8, 2021
J'adore tout simplement. Il y a eu des nuits où je voulais continuer à lire mais mes yeux n'en pouvaient plus. Vous allez avoir envie de terminer le livre rapidement de savoir ce qui va se passer à Jeremiah ensuite vous vous sentirez accros à Sabrina. J'ai savouré chaque page de ce bouquin même si que par moments je me disais pourquoi il y a un autre problème qui surgit tout allait merveilleusement bien ??? Mais j'ai adoré l'histoure et la fin était tout simplement juste. Je le recommande vivement!
September 21, 2019
There are four Danielle steel books that I read when I was young and which have stayed with me throughout my life. This is one of them. I love the story! It’s so rich and draws on so much historical fact. I believe that this this book was a result of the time In Steele’s writing when she produced some of the best books in her career. Thurston House shouldn’t be categorized as a Romance. It is Historical Fictionfiction at its best!
Displaying 1 - 30 of 187 reviews