Noah Gordon (1926–2021)

Rob Cole born in England is orphaned and apprenticed to a barber surgeon. After the Barber surgeon’s death he meets a Jewish physician and learns of a great physician Avicina who lives in the Middle East. He knows that to travel is dangerous and will be challenging but he braves the trip and becomes a disciple of Avicenna. He excels as a medical student and then as a physician given the limits of the time. The story takes place about 40 years before the time of William the Conqueror. He marries a Scott’s woman who happens to also be traveling in the far east looking for special sheep. Rob becomes a confidant of the Shah and a court physician at times. The Shah becomes embroiled in a war with a neighboring ruler, looses the war and then his life. Rob his wife and their children decide to dare the return journey to England. The journey succeeds. They stop first in London. Rob’s wife Mary is unhappy in London so he helps her return home to Scotland. When Rob is accused of being a heretic because he had disguised himself as a Jew in order to travel to the Middle East he realizes he also must travel to Scotland and rejoin his family. She helps him set up as a physician in Scotland.… (meer)

Coming from my mother I was worried this one would also come across as a novel one would look for at camp meeting book stalls, but this book turned out to be just a nice general fiction novel about a young man, a sort of coming of age story in which he escapes from a Carlist plot that was to frame him along with his friends in the killing of a top public official. He returns to his small village armed with better knowledge of vinyard management, and sets to work building his own vinyard out of the one his father owned. I liked the occasional details about how one improves grapes for wine production, and other winery info. And, since the story was set in Spain, I got to enjoy an armchair vacation to Spain for the duration of this book.
… (meer)