Book Review: Four Winds of Love by Danny Caspi

Title: Four Winds of Love
Author: Danny Caspi
Genre: Historical Fiction
Rating: 4 stars
Purchase: Amazon
Review copy provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Do you really know your parents? Their loves? Their lives? Their secrets?

Can a child ever recover lost memories and finally know the truth about his parents? This story begins in Paris in the thirties and ends in Israel in the nineties. It is told through four voices, whose lives and loves intertwine through a complex of feelings, secrets, and loyalties: Yakir, the cultured translator, and Jacob, the small town school teacher, are both involved back and forth in Betty’s life. Her son, the deserted, innocent witness, will later reconstruct the pieces, glued together by memories.
A unique, impassioned true-life story interwoven with a true-life history

But mostly, it is a novel about a unique woman, about desertions, loneliness, acceptance, and forgiveness. With exceptional sensitivity, this family story unfolds, with heroes whose pain, joy, vulnerability, and vitality blend with moving historical events to create a tantalizing evocation of the power of the imagination to remember and heal what the heart has been striving to forget.

Four Winds of Love is an emotional journey of one woman’s life, her secrets, her family ties, the unique elements that make her her, the family that surrounded her, shaped her and helped her grow.

The book is partially based on the author’s memories of his mother, which slowly returned to him as he became older, but part of it is fiction as well. It’s a nice blend, with historical events crisscrossing through the book, giving it a more realistic vibe.

The book has a rather slow start, though, and the pacing never really gets to where it should, always a tad too slow. Despite that, the characters and story were still enjoyable, but if I had to give one criticism, this would be it.