Review - Legacy by Danielle Steel

Legacy: A Novel by Danielle Steel

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


From the cover

A tale of love, courage and family, interweaving the lives of two extraordinary women - a writer working in the heart of modern academia, and a daring young Sioux of an unforgettable journey in the eighteenth century.

Someday is Brigitte Nicholson's watchword. Someday she and the man she loves, Ted, will clarify their relationship. Someday she'll have children. Someday she'll finish writing her book. Someday she'll stop playig it so safe...Then something happens that changes Brigette's life completely.

Struggling to plot a new course, Brigitte agrees to help her mother on a genealogy project - and makes a discovery that reaches back to the French aristrocracy. How did Brigitte's ancestor, Wachiwi, a Dakota Sioux, travel from the Great Plains to the French court of Marie Antoinette? How did she come to marry into Brigitte's family? Brigitte decides to travel to South Dakota and Paris to follow the path of this exceptional young woman who lived so long ago. And as she begins to solve the puzzle of Wachiwi's journey, her quiet life becomes an adventure of its own.

A chance meeting and a new opportunity put Brigitte back at the heart of her own story. And with family legacy coming to life around her, someday is no longer in the future. Instead, someday is now.

My Review

This is my 3rd book as part of the Transworld Book Group

For me Brigitte is quite an unlikeable character, to start with she just seems efficient and organised if maybe a tad boring. However as the story progresses she has two life changing events in as many days and her character becomes needy and pathetic. It was quite annoying to read and even offputting but I stuck with it and I am glad I did. We are introduced to her ancestor Wachiwi, who is everything Brigitte is not. Strong, courageous, brave, a fighter, she continues to fight for what she wants and loves and considering we are going back to the 1700s when woman had no place doing anything bar raising children and cooking it is a refreshing and amazing change of pace.

The story then goes practically chapter for chapter between the present with Brigitte and the past of Wachiwi's time. The difference between the two women and their lives is amazing and as Brigitte follows the traces to find out more about her ancestor as do we. I had hoped Brigitte would be more like her ancestor the more she discovered and if I am honest I only liked her character in the last chapter.

If the story had purely been about Brigitte it would have been a bore to read but with Wachiwi's tale it brought the rating from a 1 to a 3/5. If nothing else this book should be read for Wachiwi's story which I loved and would have liked to have seen as a stand alone book.



View all my reviews