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Reviewed by Jamie Michele for Readers' Favorite
In Nicholas Teeguarden’s The Boy from the Vines, in Paris, Ruth finds a journal written by Joseph Durand, a young man living on a French vineyard during the German occupation of 1940, and begins tracing his movements to determine whether he was a real person. The journal describes Joseph guiding families at risk across the occupied territory before changing to work involving tracking patrol routes and passing information through local contacts. Ruth follows these accounts through church archives, property records, and surviving family testimonies, connecting the locations across northern France to the events he recorded. Her research puts her in direct conflict with a student named Eric, who argues that Joseph is an imaginary figure built from shared wartime patterns, forcing Ruth to prepare a formal case that defines who Joseph was based on the evidence she can verify.
Nicholas Teeguarden’s The Boy from the Vines takes its title from a young man whose identity begins in vineyard labor, which is later linked to the wider movement of people and information across occupied France. This is a novel of the Holocaust, so there is a very natural mix of the heartening with the heartbreaking, with a Christian element. Joseph and Ruth feel like they are on equal footing, and through Ruth's thread, we see her determination as she examines parish records in Rouen, compares independent documents, and defends Joseph’s authorship before a committee. The settings are magnificent, and the author breathes life into the settings, from a coastal departure point near Cauville to a confessional that becomes a channel for passing information. Readers interested in Christian historical fiction will just love this book. Recommended.
