THE THREAT IS CATASTROPHIC ~ THE TARGET IS A MAFIA DON ~ THE GAME IS PLAYED BY THE DON’S WIFE
The Don’s Wife mock cover
The Don’s Wife debuts in a new thriller by Lynn F. Casella.
“When the California wine industry clashes with the California Mafia, Sarina is caught between her boss, her husband and her conscience. When an intriguing Russian wine collector complicates her life, and Sarina is betrayed, she decides to do it her way and take no prisoners, in this sexy, balls to the wall thriller,” says Shamus Award winning novelist Lynn S. Hightower about The Don’s Wife.
Sarina and Nick Donato’s special relationship with each other and harvesting the wine grapes is shown in one of the opening chapters of The Don’s Wife.
“He wrinkled up his brow, a sign I saw every year we had early rain. He put his arms around me suddenly, nibbling on my ear and whispering, “Come walking with me through the vines tomorrow to re-check the grape’s sugar.”
I felt sweat on my forehead and my cheeks flushed. I enjoyed his impulsiveness. I married him because his emotions surfaced when I least expected them. I never resisted them. Of course, I’d walk with him tomorrow through one of the grapevine rows that made serpentine patterns across the valley floor.”
Nick Donato is chosen by Cucamonga Valley vineyard owner, Don Pino Pellerito, in a federal prison visit to succeed him because he has the qualifications necessary. He’s Sicilian and trusted son of the Don’s Zinfandel grape vineyard harvester and shipper. He’s blood. Nick takes over after Don Pino dies unexpectedly.
Next, a catastrophic threat to Napa Sonoma wine grape vineyards is revealed when a NASA satellite confirms the diagnosis by Sarina’s boss of the Agricultural Department of California State University, Green Hills, that Napa Sonoma vineyards are headed for ecological destruction.
Just as the new Don shows cunning and skill in negotiating a business deal between Northern California vintners who’ll lose everything if their vineyards are destroyed by an unstoppable pest, he underestimates his own wife.
When a fire engulfs Napa Sonoma’s first crush wine storage facility and is dangerously close to trucks carrying Zinfandel grafted grape vine root stock that can save Napa Sonoma vines, Sarina Donato is forced to choose between her lover and her husband. She stops at nothing, targeting him and then shooting him to get what she wants.
The Don’s Wife plot twists faster than a rambling grape vine, through the halls of agricultural science to the wine brokers of Napa Sonoma to the city by the Golden Gate and the Cucamonga Valley’s mother wine grape vineyard rootstock, where Sarina focuses her attention. And, through it all, she does not see the truth till it’s too late. Her husband is the wrong opponent.
And when he dies by her hand, she finds new purpose as the first American woman Don. She hones her Lady Don skills and exposes her real opponent that ensures the threatened Napa Sonoma vineyards rise again. In the end, she calls the shots, but must return home to Calabria, Italy, at the command of N’drangheta Mafia Don Francesco Luciano. She goes without question, but commits herself to avenge her father’s murder while she’s there in her own sweet time.
Filled with dramatic turns, The Don’s Wife rivets readers from the opening passages to a shootout attack on California’s Interstate 5, to the final compact Sarina makes with her real opponent to save the Northern California vineyards before she’s asked to return to her childhood home, Calabria, Italy.