The Poet’s Wife

Author/Guide: Rebecca Stonehill

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1920s: A journey deep into the heart of 1920‘s Granada during the time of the Spanish Civil War.

ISBN: 978-1909490512
Genre: Fiction

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What you need to know before your trail

The Poet’s Wife is a historical family saga that sweeps over 50 years of life in Granada, from the 1920s onwards.

The poet’s wife Luisa is married to Eduardo who although a lawyer is a poet by heart. Luisa is the head of the family and the strength of that family as she is the one who supports and keeps her family together. Isabel is their first born – the second woman who tells her story. The third – Isabel’s daughter Isabel.

This is the story of love, heartbreak and the strength of the women in keeping their family whole during the fear of the war. We see the war through their eyes and see how they interpret events and what they do to get through each day.

How the civil war and Franco’s legacy continues to haunt each one of these remarkable women’s lives.

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Travel Guide

Behind the jasmine filled courtyard, perched amongst houses like clouds on a hilltop, stands a beautiful villa; Carmen de las Estrellas. So starts the blurb describing the home of Eduardo and Luisa and despite the war which is looming over the hills, this is just a small part of the beautiful evocative writing that is on each and every page of this novel.

When the Civil war erupts in Spain, the landscape changes quite dramatically – the scenes between the three women in the book change also and the family both devastated and bound by the war going on around them is reflected in the descriptions of the women’s country, their home and their fear of what they will lose.

Granada during the Spanish Civil War is a remarkable place to return to since we meet these women and get a very unique insight into women’s experiences at that time.

Booktrailer Review

Susan @thebooktrailer

Even though I had studied the Civil War during my time at university, I had not read about it like this before. I had not learned of the personal stories of the war and the sheer length of the conflict and the Franco years and what exactly this must have been like for the country’s people.

This is a sweeping saga and amazing story of three women living and experiencing the war from 1920 onwards, there’s not just the tales of woe and the experience of the hardships of their condition but their feelings and impressions and the everyday reality of living with something you can’t control and which seems to be destroying everything you believe in.

Stories of the civil war in Spain are fascinating since it tells of a very recent time and this is perhaps the best book I have read about the female perspective, of love and loss, of the power of poetry and literature, ‘ meeting’ Garcia Lorca and living and breathing the essence of a country.

Powerful and very very moving. Tissues at the ready!