The Vineyard

by Maria Duenas

This book starts with the story of a Spaniard, Mauro, living in Mexico, who through hard work and taking some financial risks which paid off, has gone from being  mine worker to a wealthy man.  He has married daughter who is about to give birth and a son who he has sent away to France, to learn the mining business, because he was getting into financial trouble and romantic entrigues.  His son is engaged to the daughter of another wealthy Mexican family.  He hopes the stint in France will help his son mature.

As the story opens we find out that the man is on the brink of bankruptcy because he used most of his wealth to procure some mining equipment from the U.S. and with the U.S. Civil War underway his money is gone and he will not get the equipment.

He goes to a lone shark he had dealt with in his youth and strikes a devil's bargain, borrowing money to try to re-establish himself in Cuba, with the equity being his only remaining property, his fabulous house in Mexico City.  If he does not make the first payment on the loan in four months he will forfeit his house.

Before he leaves for Cuba two people insist on entrusting money with him, his daughter's mother-in-law gives him money to invest.  Another man approaches him asking him to take the man's sister's inheritance money to her in Cuba.  He reluctantly agrees to do take the money from both people.

When he arrives in Cuba he is surprised to learn that the woman who has inherited the money does not want people to know that she knows him and does not want her husband to learn of the money.
They end up having apparently secret meetings.  However her husband finds out about these meetings (perhaps the woman even dropped the news trying to get him to be jealous) and challenges the man to a billiards game.  If the man wins he can have the mans wife, if he loses he must leave the woman alone.  Mauro doesn't the woman but is intrigued by the challenge.  He is advised by a man he has made friends with to lose the game as he thinks the husband wishes to lose his wife.  So Mauro does lose the game.  The husband then ups the stakes, offering property and a vineyard that he recently inherited in Spain.  Mauro wins the game this time and heads to Spain to see the property and sell it so that he can make his firs debt repayment.

He finds the property and vineyards are in terrible condition.  He also meets a woman who has fond memory of the property and of the family that owned the estate.  It seems that the last owner didn't care about it and let things fall into disrepair as he fell further into debt.  The woman confides in Mauro that she is having trouble with her step-son who is tyring to take over the family business.  Her husband is still alive but seems to be suffering from a mental condition and she has been running it.  She asks Mauro to pretend to be the dead owner of the property to help her cover some illegal things she has done to protect her business.

As the story goes on the man's son winds up in Spain with him, the woman whose husband lost the property in the billiards game arrives and insists Mauro give back the property.  Mauro and the other woman end up locking her up, she escapes and tells people she was held against her will but Mauro and his lady friend are able to convince people that the other woman is making things up.

The book was very tense at times as you saw how desparate the man was to financially recover.  Some people in Cuba had wanted him to invest in a slave trade venture but he refused to do this on moral grounds so he has some principles.  As the story goes along we find out that a family story about one of the family members being shot in a hunting accident actually had the wrong person being blamed for the killing.  The woman in Cuba had wooed the relative from Spain who owned the property and Vineyard in Spain to Cuba and convinced him to change his will to have her husband be the beneficiary. 

In the end the man decides to stay in Spain and resurrect the vineyard.  He does not make his debt repayments so loses his property in Mexico city but he does not regret it and eventually he and the woman (whose husband had committed suicide) realize they love each other.

It was  very well written story but there were so many story lines, some I have not even mentioned, going on and so many intrigues it was hard to keep it all straight at times.