WHISPERING VINES by Renu Mahajan (Baltimore, Publish America, 2004)

Book Review by Thelma Shinn Richard, Professor Emerita,

Department of English, Arizona State University, Tempe

August 9, 2004

“Daphné Deveraux is a blue-eyed French Canadian from Montreal, but her story unfolds in the vineyards of the Antùnez Hacienda in Chillan, Chile,” the synopsis on the back cover of Renu Mahajan’s romance, Whispering Vines, begins. The novel itself, however, has already explored two moving stories before Daphne ever arrives in Chile. Although this is Mahajan’s first novel, she handles exposition and action with the artistry of a professional, involving her readers emotionally with the history that brings Daphne and her goddaughter Anna Antùnez to the latter’s ancestral home.

Early in the first chapter, Mahajan has won the readers’ hearts for the endearing two-year-old Anna, whose search for her teddy bear delays the flight from Buenos Aires to Chillan, reflecting the power of the Antùnez name even as far away as Argentina. Anna’s tragic loss of her father, Raùl Antùnez, six months earlier to a malignant brain tumor exacerbates the anger readers will feel toward the wealthy and aristocratic brother and mother who turned their backs on this younger son when he married her mother Francine, whose platinum-blonde loveliness, grace and charm had won his heart.

Daphné, however, had been attracted to Francine more for “the inner nervousness and lack of confidence” she detected when they met between classes at Concordia University in Montreal, where Raùl was a professor and Daphné a student. The link quickly forged between Francine and Daphné owed much to their similar histories. Both had been abandoned by their birth mothers and raised by social services, going from one foster family to another. Francine and Raùl soon became Daphné’s surrogate family, culminating in their request that she become their daughter's godmother.

To help Francine care for Raùl during his final illness, Daphné had moved in with them, handling the household and the care of Anna. The lack of any contact during this time with Raùl’s family, even his own mother, increases Daphné’s own anger toward her and Raùl’s brother, Damian Antùnez. However, six months after Raùl’s death, Francine receives a letter from Damian Antùnez, informing her that the news of Raùl's tragic death had caused their mother to have a stroke that left her paralyzed on one side and, finally, requesting that she and Anna come to Chile. Her own hatred aside, Daphné doesn't want Francine to miss this opportunity to connect with Raùl’s family and agrees to accompany Francine at her request.

I have described in detail the exposition with which Mahajan succinctly and powerfully creates the bond between Daphné and Anna that will lead her to accept Damian’s plan that she pretend to be Francine and accompany him and Anna to the Antùnez vineyards. His goal is to protect his mother from yet another devastating shock; hers is to protect her beloved goddaughter.

The second story contained in the initial chapter of Whispering Vines depicts a terrifying experience of turbulence on the flight from Argentina to Chile that leads Francine to push Daphné's head down and lie covering both her and Anna. Daphné’s concern for Francine—“Trying to save them, she would get killed”—proves prophetic when later a fire breaks out, and the plane must attempt a belly landing. This dramatic action ends the chapter and propels us into the rest of the story.

Such mastery of both exposition and action promises a fine-tuned romance, which Mahajan delivers in the lush scenery of the Chilean winery and countryside. As the French Canadian Daphné tries to assimilate into this very traditional culture for the sake of her beloved goddaughter, the character-driven plot explores her developing relationships both with the mother, Doña Isidora, and the once-hated brother Damian. Add a few twists from Raùl's former fiancée, who still hopes to become part of the wealthy Antùnez family, and a variety of other characters from Chilean peasants to the President of Chile, and you have a wonderful read that you won’t want to put down.