Complicated, absorbing, pretty stressing, sad, captivating. It's this and more La Casa di June or June by Miranda Beverly-Whittemore . Published by Marsilio Editori, I felt a powerful attraction when I discovered this book because of the title and plot. I love stories about houses, old houses, and hidden secrets. But first of all: do houses have a soul? Of course they have a soul; of course they absorb the mood of their people, their loves, their hates, their discussions, their amiability, harmony, hospitality.
A house has a soul and she influences its people; she loves them, she hates them; Two Oaks will be one of the protagonists of this book.
St.Jude, Ohio: an apparent common story this one; the grand-mom, June, of the protagonist, Cassie, dies and leaves the house at her niece.
After a month from her arrival, the house is still in miserable conditions and Cassie is unsecure about the future of the house, because she is work-less, she broke up with Jim her boyfriend.
One day, someone urgently rings at the bell of Two Oaks, and Cassie discovers thanks to this person, a good-looking man called Nick that she surprisingly inherited wagons of million of dollars and properties around the world thanks to an actor, Jack Montgomery, passed away some weeks before. A stranger to her. Never met him, never seen him. Why this?
The arrival of Tate Montgomery, Jack's daughter, who peacefully wants to try to discover if realistically Cassie is the daughter of a son her dad had had while he was working in St.Jude in 1955, will be saluted like a dream by Cassie. She admires Tate from a life.
It is interesting this book for understand how the life around an actress or an actor is structured and organized; the book is spectacularly detailed. From food eaten by the star, to the rest of her day.
At the same time Cassie remembers her granny June and also her grand-dad: two morigerated common people. Possible that her grand-dad wasn't the dad of her dad? Possible that granny June lived with a secret like this one for all her life?
While the protagonists of this story will search for answers reading old letters, contacting old people, trying to reconstruct the summer of 1955 when a troupe from Hollywood afforded to St.Jude, the book will tell us also what happened in 1955 in the little town of St.Jude.
1955: Jack Montgomery and Diane DeSoto are arrived to St. Jude for filming a movie. Everyone is excited including young June and Lindie. The second one, lesbian, obtains a work as PA on the set and when June will be interested to meet Jack, because she was waiting her boyfriend, but the boyfriend deluded her because he didn't appear to the horizon, she will arrange, although in love for her, all the appointments with him. It will be simple for June, so young and dreaming to fall in love for Jack.
Pity that the game will be discovered and the two girls will be heavily blackmailed.
It's a very sad story but interesting, real because sometimes in this life there are many chains caused by past facts in grade to change a life forever.
The destiny of June and Lindie will always be connected after that summer of 1955, because of a brutal fact happened in the town, and discovered. Since there, a murder and a birth were kept secrets for an entire life: a destiny of a life, maybe good, maybe bad, who knows? broken and changed forever.
Sometimes, this book teaches, people pay an entire life indirectly or directly for the errors of other people but without any regret.
The description of actors, actresses, sets, parties are vivid, realistic, and pretty well described.
I also found devastating the discovery made at a certain point by Tate regarding the dna. A very strong book, it will leave for sure traces in your soul.
Highly recommended.
I thank Marsilio Editori for the physical copy of this book.
Anna Maria Polidori
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