THE APPLE ORCHARD by Susan Wiggs

The Apple Orchard (Bella Vista Chronicles #1)
by Susan Wiggs

Tess Delaney makes a living returning stolen treasures to their rightful owners. She loves illuminating history, filling the spaces in people's hearts with stories of their family legacies.

But Tess's own history is filled with gaps: a father she never met, and a mother who spent more time traveling than with her daughter.

Then Dominic Rossi arrives on the doorstep of the San Francisco shop Tess hopes to buy, and he tells her that the grandfather she never knew is in a coma. Tess has been named in his will to inherit half of Bella Vista, a hundred-acre apple orchard in the magical Sonoma town called Archangel.

The rest is willed to Isabel Johansen. A half sister she hadn't heard of.

Isabel is everything Tess isn't: all softness to Tess's hard angles, warm and nurturing where Tess is tightly wound. But against the rich landscape of Bella Vista, with Isabel and Dominic by her side, Tess begins to discover a world filled with the simple pleasures of food and family, of the warm earth beneath her bare feet. A world where family comes first and the roots of history run deep.

  This novel was a pleasure to read. I love learning something while enjoying interesting characters and a well thought out plot line. I liked the flashbacks to Denmark during the German occupation.

The Bella Vista Chronicles books.  I read the Bee Keeper's Ball #2 first and after reading it realized there was a book one, so decided to go ahead with The Apple Orchard. There is so much to love about this book. The storyline with its WWII backdrop pulled me in, and the characters were richly drawn with their complex issues. The author uses many layers to build the story as the past mingles with the present.

present. The storyline includes a mystery, romance, secrets, and redemption.