The Return by Victoria Hislop

Bold and mesmerising, Hislop captures her readers right from the beginning, opening the book with the fun activity of dancing, which our Protagonist takes up as a escapism method due to her unhappy marriage.
The story quickly turns as she follows a friend to Spain where she spends a holiday of fun and dance classes, she quickly falls in love with the Spanish life style and begins to talk with the owner of a cafe that she visits frequently. The decor and atmosphere of the cafe soon encourages a number of questions that bring the long lost mother of Sonia, whom died when she was young and of whom she knows very little, to life in the story of what passed with the family that originally owned the cafe.
The story returns to the early 19th Century and brings with it love, loss, struggle and enlightenment.
This novel is full of heart and emotion as it follows the tale of the young Mercedes.