The Vintner's Luck

New York: Farrar Straus Giroux,, 1998. First edition. Hardcover. Good/very good. 283 pages, first US edition

Publisher Notes A novel of angels, wine, and love without boundaries set in nineteenth-century Burgundy. One summer night in 1808, Sobran Jodeau sets out to drown his love sorrows in his family's vineyard. Drunk, he stumbles on an angel: "Someone had set a statue down on the ridge. Sobran blinked and swayed. For a second he saw what he knew--gilt, paint and varnish, the sculpted labial eye of a church statue. Then he swooned while still walking forward, and the angel stood quickly to catch him." Once he gets over his shock, Sobran decides that Xas, the male angel, is his guardian sent to counsel him on everything from marriage to wine production. But Xas turns out to be a far more mysterious character. A favourite of both God and Satan, he is, unlike other angels, allowed to go freely about the world, collecting earthly roses for his garden. Sobran and Xas agree to meet on this night every year of Sobran's life, and eventually man and angel fall in passionate love, complicating both their lives. Compelling and erotic, The Vintner's Luck explores a decidedly unorthodox love story as Sobran eventually comes to love and be loved by both Xas and the young Countess de Valday, his friend and employer at the neighbouring château.