The Vineyard at Painted Moon by Susan Mallery

The Vineyard at Painted Moon
By Susan Mallery
HQN Books, 2021

Susan Mallery’s initial descriptions of Mackenzie Dienes, the heroine of her new book The Vineyard at Painted Moon, are deceptively complacent. Readers first meet her in the company of her husband Rhys as they prepare for a party at their well-appointed Washington State home on the grounds of their Bel Après Winery, and on the surface all seems well: they have the easy banter of long-time friends. 

But there are glints of trouble, carefully embedded even in this early scene. “The days of stealing away for sexy kisses were long gone,” Mackenzie thinks. “There were no lingering looks, no intimacy.” The life has gone out of what was once a dream marriage, and in swiftly-drawn but natural-feeling plot developments, the remaining momentum peters out and Mackenzie finds herself adrift.

She’s far more adrift than many people in such a position, as she quickly realizes. She’s poured herself entirely into not only her marriage but her husband’s world. His family is her family. His business running the vineyard is her business, and she’s very good at it - but suddenly she feels she has no stake in any of it. She could stay on at Bel Apres, but she’d be an employee - and as her new reality gradually becomes more tangible, she feels an increasing desire to validate herself separate from her old world. 

Mallery handles all this with a remarkable empathy. This is a slow novel in all the best ways. Mackenzie’s evolution as a person, a professional, and a mother is allowed to flower and branch at a pace that feels natural rather than novelistic, and the slow curdling of Rhys’s initially genial nature likewise feels like the kind of gradual development a reader might experience in their own lives. The book’s kitschy add-ons - a guide to wine, a few recipes - if anything work a bit at cross-purposes to what is Susan Mallery’s best and most finely-textured novel. 

Steve Donoghue is a founding editor of Open Letters Monthly. His book criticism has appeared in The Boston Globe, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and The American Conservative. He writes regularly for The National, The Vineyard Gazette, and The Christian Science Monitor. His website is http://www.stevedonoghue.com.