Getting a second chance
With Moonlight Over Paris, internationally bestselling historical fiction author — and Torontonian — Jennifer Robson turns her elegant authorial gaze on post-First World War Paris and the Generation.
The book begins with Lady Helena Montagu-Douglas-Parr (who would rather be called Helena, thank you) on her deathbed, contemplating what she will do if she survives the illness threatening to claim her. She wants to live, she decides, but she might not get the chance.
The fever breaks and Helena, who has been spurned by London’s high society following a broken engagement, petitions her parents to allow her one year to live in France and study art, one year to be the person she has always wanted to be, before returning home and taking up the mantle of family obligation (as well as the pitied spinster label) once more. Helena meets Sara and Gerald Murphy, real-life characters cleverly appropriated by Robson. The Murphys don’t know it yet, but they’re poised to play host to everyone who was anyone in the Lost Generation at the villa they’re currently renovating: Hemingway, Picasso and the Fitzgeralds, to name a few. Before she leaves for Paris, Helena meets an American journalist named Sam Howard who seems unlike anyone she has known in her sheltered world. But while Helena feels drawn to what she perceives as Sam’s authenticity, she simply cannot fit a romance, especially with such an unsuitable match, into her lost year. Or can she? As she chases her dreams she must watch them change as she gets closer to grasping them, and she must come to terms with many life lessons. Marissa Stapley is the Toronto-based bestselling author of Mating for Life. Her second novel, Things To Do When It’s Raining, will be released by Simon & Schuster in 2017.