Thanks to both NetGalley and Lake Union publishing for this ARC, which I award 4.5 stars and thoroughly enjoyed. A different genre than I usually choose, from mystery author Rhys Bowen, but delightful to read.

It was a very fine stand-alone read about WWII, told with two time lines. In 1944 a British warplane was shot down over Tuscany and Hugo Langley ( Sir Hugo actually), the pilot, although wounded parachutes to safety. The story is told alternately between winter 1944 and Hugo's tale a and Joanna his daughter in the 1970s ( born in 1945). In Italy, in the same time shifts are Sofia a lovely Italian young woman with a young son.

Joanna in 1973 goes to San Salvatore to try to put closure after her father's death and meets Sofia's son.There is an interesting dual love story going on, as well as a very good mystery.

I know little about how the war progressed in Italy or about the privations that people endured so that part held my attention also.

Perhaps the characters might reappear under different circumstances? I loved it and Rhys Bowen has a way of drawing one into the environment she describes. An exciting and fun Christmas read which I am recommending to mystery fans.

"Sometimes you make choices in life and sometimes choices make you." (Gayle Forman)

Hugo Langley, an RAF pilot, finds himself behind the controls on a bombing mission near the northern hills above Lucca, Italy. December of 1944 brings no choices, only commands from the powers that be. The Germans have taken over the area and Langley and his crew are in a destiny to stop them.

Once airborne, Hugo and his co-pilot have been hit by enemy fire. Too late for the co-pilot, but Langley parachutes and miraculously hits the ground still alive. Desperately, he wraps up the parachute even though he is in extreme agony from a bullet wound to his leg. He crawls behind a tree and passes out.

Hugo's eyes open to what he perceives to be the face of an angel. It is Sofia Bartoli from the tiny village of San Salvatore who was picking random mushrooms in the area. In his broken Italian, Hugo describes his situation and Sofia describes hers. The Germans are a threatening force and both Englishman and Italian woman are in danger of being discovered.

Rhys Bowen fast forwards this story to 1973 and swoops it down amidst the surroundings of Langley Hall Estate. Sir Hugo Langley has passed away and his only child, Joanna, has come to claim his things. She has been studying law and preparing to take the bar exam. Langley Hall had been sold and turned into a private school because of vast debts.

As Joanna packs away and sorts through years of items, she comes across a letter to a mysterious Sofia from San Salvatore. Joanna had no knowledge of her father's plight in Italy during the war. Determined to find out more, she travels to this isolated village to find out what she can and to come to know this man who was her father.

The reader leans in as Bowen tells a story like no other with much detail and laces it with quick dialogue and a shifting storyline from one generation to another. She brings the warmth of Italy with its rich countryside and its hearty people into play. There are curious characters both on the English front and in the Italian setting. But make no mistake, a dead body will find its way to floating in a village well. Those above-mentioned choices will certainly take seed from the past and sprout into the present with consequences both good and bad. A delightful read by the very talented Rhys Bowen.

I received a copy of The Tuscan Child through NetGalley for an honest review. My thanks to Lake Union Publishing and to Rhys Bowen for the opportunity.

It's 1944, and a British fighter plane has just been shot down over Italy, forcing the pilot to parachute to safety. His leg is severely damaged, and he looks for somewhere to hide. A local woman, out gathering mushrooms, comes to his aid and he is able to survive. The Germans are everywhere, and life is incredibly perilous.

In June, 1973, his daughter Joanna travels to Italy to search for "the beautiful boy, hidden where only Sofia and Hugo could find him" mentioned in an old AirMail letter. Presumably a brother? But when she arrives, the village closes ranks and, to a person, they deny that a British airman was shot down in their area. Really? Seriously? Yes, they say that Sofia left the village with a German soldier. Not a Brit.

So, what's the secret they are all keeping, and why?

This is a pleasurable read with a very, very interesting ending.

I read this EARC courtesy of Edelweiss and Lake Union Publishing. pub date 02/20/18

Mysteries abound, some to be untangled and solved, some to remain unresolved. A young woman grieving for a home and father she never really knew, a British aristocrat turned fighter pilot, an Italian woman living in a small Tuscan village, World War II. If any of these elements spark your interest you are sure to enjoy this story told in point and counterpoint. Love, deception, corruption and intrigue run through the pages and urge you on even though there is a predictability to this story that is reminiscent of many other war stories. It was a solid narrative of a very possible and believable set of events.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Lake Union Publishing for the Early Review copy.

This is a good book. I enjoyed the story of it. Joanna is the heroine of the story. The book goes back and forth between Joanna and her father. Hugo, the father, was an English fighter pilot whose plane was shot down over Tuscany, Italy. A woman from the small village of San Salvatore finds him and helps nurse him back to health. The story is well written but I found it at different times to be just a little disconnected/predictable. I will recommend this book to family and friends. Thank you to NetGalley and Lake Union for allowing me to read an advance copy for my honest review.

While I like Bowen’s series, I’m not what I would call a fan. However, she really shines in this well written standalone novel. Although the reader knows pretty early in the book about how it will end, Bowen does a good job of revealing the mystery thin layer by thin layer, exposing details that hold the book’s suspense until nearly the end. Her writing really shines both in describing the setting and in building characters that seem real and with whom many readers will identify. I’ll eagerly read Bowen’s next novel.

Recently I have developed a penchant for books based in the World War settings.There are so many emotions to illustrate, hardships define the characters. It determines in no uncertain terms where their conscience draws the lines for them in life. 

This book is no exception.The story is told in two parts, parallelly progressing ( this seems to be a recurring but successful mode of narration in the books I've read of late) . The first part is in 1944 and the other in 1973. Both time periods that are effectively ancient history to someone born in the last two or three decades.

In 1944 we have Hugo Langley struggling to stay alive, having crashed in a remote village in Tuscany.In 1973, Joanna Langley is coming to terms with her father's sudden demise , realizing there was so much left unsaid between them. This lack of communication goes both ways because Joanna finds information about her father that she would have never guessed.To determine the true meaning of a cryptic letter, she sets off to Tuscany. A whole new world then opens up to her, of people and information and this could lead to a different future than her previous expectation.

This is an amazing book and I loved it. Rhys Bowen writes the Royal Spyness mysteries, which are cozy mysteries set just prior to WWII. She has one other standalone book, In Farleigh Feild, set in WWII era, and this is another excellent standalone entry. Her writing is fantastic, and her plots draw you in and keep you there for the duration of the book.

During WWII in the mountains over Italy, Hugo Langley, a British bomber pilot, is shot down and crashes. He's injured but alive and needs to recover. A local woman named Sofia Bartoli finds him and leads him to a ruined monastery, where he recovers and they grow very close.

Upon his death in England, his daughter Joanna finds a letter and some artifacts that lead her to a small mountain town in Italy. She' was estranged from her father and never knew anything about his past, and she has her own share of personal problems. What she finds in Italy shocks her and changes her life.

The story goes back and forth from WWII to the present day but never in a confusing way. This is an exceptional book and I highly recommend it.

Thanks to Lake Union Publishing and NetGalley for the ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Bowen is a remarkably reliable writer, and this standalone excels in setting an interesting story both during WWII Italy and during the 1970s. In one story, we follow a downed British pilot as he hids in a hilltop ruined chapel and is befriended by a young Italian wife. The second story line is about that pilot's estranged daughter who has to deal with the aftermath of her father's death years later (in the early 1970s), which eventually leads her back to the same Italian village. Anything to do with WWII can make an intriguing story, and Bowen amps up the suspense with many threads of the first story left hanging for the young daughter to pick up and solve. This is a story full of rich descriptions of both land and food, as well as bittersweet romances and tantalizing mysteries.