Manhasset Public Library Book Discussion: Only the Beautiful

A heartrending story about a young mother's fight to keep her daughter, and the terrible injustice that tears them apart, by the USA Today bestselling author of The Nature of Fragile Things and The Last Year of the War.

California, 1938.  "When she loses her parents in an accident, sixteen-year-old Rosanne is taken in by the owners of the vineyard where she has lived her whole life as the vinedresser's daughter. She moves into Celine and Truman Calvert's spacious house with a secret--she sees colors when she hears sound. She promised her mother she'd never reveal her little-understood ability to anyone, but the weight of her isolation and grief prove too much for her. Driven by loneliness, Rosie not only breaks the vow to her mother, but in a desperate moment lets down her guard and ends up pregnant. Banished by the Calverts, Rosanne believes she is bound for a home for unwed mothers. But she soon finds out she is not going to a home for unwed mothers.


Austria, 1947.  After witnessing Adolf Hitler's brutal pursuit of hereditary purity, Helen Calvert, Truman's sister, is ready to return to America for good. But when she arrives at her brother's peaceful vineyard after decades working abroad, she is shocked to learn what really happened nine years earlier to the vinedresser's daughter Rosie, a girl whom Helen had long ago befriended. In her determination to find Rosanne, Helen discovers a shocking American program and learns that that while the war had been won in Europe, there are still terrifying battles to be fought at home.