Off the Wild Coast of Brittany

Two contemporary American sisters contend with their lives on a tiny, historically rich French island in Blackwell’s latest charmer (after The Vineyards of Champagne). Natalie Morgen, the 30-something author of a bestselling memoir about learning to cook and finding love in France, is finding it hard to write a promised sequel and to gratify her many Facebook followers with details of her glamorous life, now that her lover has run off with their money, leaving her in the ancient guesthouse they had planned to renovate together. Natalie is unexpectedly joined by her older sister, Alex, from whom she’d been estranged, and Blackwell unspools their stories alongside that of Violette, the former owner of the guesthouse, who as a young woman coped with the German occupation in WWII. Blackwell moves smoothly between the two time periods, and if Natalie and Alex’s problems are less extreme than Violette’s dangerous adventures in the Resistance, there’s plenty of drama in a leaky roof, a slowly evolving love affair, and the reconciliation between sisters as they learn about Violette through a series of handwritten recipes. While the dialogue is often unrealistically leaden with historical details, Blackwell has a light comic touch, particularly in regard to the perils of creating a social media persona. The author’s fans will be pleased. (Mar.)