The Tapestry of Love by Rosy Thornton

The Tapestry of Love by Rosy Thornton
352 pages
Published October 2010 by Headline Book Publishing, Limited
Source: the author

Catherine, divorced, mother of grown children, daughter of a woman whose dementia has taken her away already, is looking for new start on life when she sells her home in England and buys a home in the Cevennes mountains of France. She's chosen a place she loved visiting as a child, but life as an adult, trying to set up a business in a small town when you're definitely the outsider, is not nearly as idyllic as Catherine had imagined. The rains, the old buildings, the red tape - it all endeavors to wear a girl down. But Catherine's determined to make a go of it. Slowly she wins over the locals, begins to build herself a business and even meets an man (although he may be the biggest puzzle she has to solve). Her business begins to grow, her garden thrives and even the bees she's been given as a gift begin producing. But just when Catherine begins to feel that she's finally at home, bureaucracy flares its ugly head, her sister's visit exposes a new problem and a terrible loss makes Catherine rethink all of the plans she's made.

Much more than strictly a romance novel, The Tapestry of Love is a story that most woman of a certain age can relate to. Catherine is a loose ends. Her children and her mother no longer need her and she doesn't have a spouse to build a life around. The Tapestry of Love is a love story to finding yourself. If along the way, you happen to fall in love with a place and its people and even find someone who might want to spend the rest of your nights with, so much the better

Rosy Thornton teaches law at the University of Cambridge but this lady knows how to write a beautiful story. the tapestries that Catherine creates, the Cevennes mountain countryside, an intimate country life - Thornton makes them all as important to the story as the romantic love that can't seem to get off the ground between Catherine and Patrick Castagnol, one of her closest neighbors who remains a mystery. Thornton sent me this book for review a year ago; I'm sorry to have taken so long to read it. It was a lovely book to read the week of Valentine's Day!