The Good Wine - Amy Schisler

You have kept the good wine until now.

It was said that the award-winning Whispering Vines was “Written in the spirit of those time-honored books and movies of wine-growing and Italy such as A Walk in the Sun by Deborah Chief or Under the Tuscan Sun by Frances Mayes” (Thomas Holyday, Eastern Shore Writers Book Blog). Picking up five years after the story of Alex and Nicola, The Good Wine gives us the story of Nicola’s mother, Marta, and the forbidden love of her youth.

Marta Giordano spent the first half of her life on her family’s struggling vineyard and the second half in the city of Florence as a wife and mother. However, between life on the vineyard and life with her husband and son, Marta lived a third life-a summer filled with secrets and romance-while staying with her aunt in Little Italy, Baltimore. Thirty-six years later, the widowed Marta returns to Little Italy older, wiser, and longing to reconnect with the man she left behind, but will their second chance lead to even more loss and heartache than it did the first time?

Dominic DeAngelo made one mistake as a youth, and it cost him everything-the trust of his family and community, his education and promising future, and ultimately, the love of his life. For his entire adult life, Dominic has worked hard to prove to the world, and to himself, that he is a good man. Finally content with the life he has made, Dominic learns that he is destined to lose it all once again. Will a reunion with the only woman he has ever loved be the blessing he has long awaited or a curse on them both?

Excerpt

Marta stood on the docks and looked out over the water. So much had changed in the past thirty-six years, yet so much remained the same. The USS Constellation was still there, rocking on the waves produced by the passing boats. She remembered touring the ship with her Uncle Roberto. Beyond the warship, along the red-brick-paved dock, she recognized the colorful landscape of blue-windowed buildings, red umbrella-covered restaurants, and green slatted roofs over the Inner Harbor shops. The buildings were the same, but many of the names and types of shops had changed. She snapped a few pictures and sighed, recalling the times she had spent on these same docks taking pictures of the boats, the passersby, the gulls overhead, and of…

She shook away the thought and looked around. From what she had seen on her ride from the airport, much of the city outside of the central downtown had lost its allure, no longer holding the charm that was once Charm City, but that was normal of any industrialized city, she supposed. The same could be said of Florence or Rome. According to what she read online, Baltimore’s Little Italy was still a vibrant jewel in the city’s crown with its restaurants, pastry shops, and Italian markets that reminded her of home. She could remember visiting them that summer, listening to the beautiful cadence of her native tongue from the few who still spoke the language. Too many years had gone by, and Marta wondered if there was more Spanish spoken in the city than Italian. She wondered how the Polish and Ukrainian neighborhoods had fared. They were already getting smaller, crowded out by other groups, when she was here those many years ago.

She walked along the bricks, listening to gulls calling out overhead, often drowned out by the laughter of children, the droning of motors, and the blowing whistles of the incoming water traffic. She stopped to watch a family toss breadcrumbs into the harbor; a little girl squealed in delight as a duck scooped a piece of crust into its bill. The scene took her back to a summer day in June, another walk along the dock, the tossing of bread to the ducks, and the warm feel of a strong hand holding hers.

Marta smiled at the memory. It had been a long time ago, but the memory was a cherished one—a stolen afternoon, a secret rendezvous, the thrill of something forbidden and unknown. She took a long, deep breath and pictured his eyes, so warm and caring, the color of the sea she traveled to on holiday so many times—the rich, blue-green hue of the Mediterranean on a hot July day. She remembered once when Nicola was just three, running in the sand along the sea that reminded her of…