the many lives and secret sorrows of josephine b

I can say this without hesitation as I was swayed on more than one occasion to conduct a little on line research of my own, so fascinated was I by the historic events through which Rose was living. I fell in the dirt and scrambled to my feet.ĭespite the fact that this is a work of fiction let there be no doubt that it has been meticulously researched. I backed away, stumbling over a gnarled tree root. The old woman began to dance, singing with the voice of a man. She shook her hands, crying out words I could not understand. Finally she spoke, slowly, but strangely. The old woman was shaking her head and mumbling. Then she looked at me and screamed-a sound I will never forget, not unlike a pig being stuck. The old woman began to moan, rolling her head from side to side, the whites of her eyes cloudy.

The story opens with Rose being told an extraordinary fortune by a voodoo priestess who lived in the shack up the river. I met her first at the tender age of fourteen, in 1777, as Rose, on the island of Martinique. To be accurate though I cannot yet call her Josephine. Every sentence just flows into the next and I feel as though I am a fly on the wall looking over Josephine’s shoulder as she writes. That would have been my loss as the writing here is sublime. In fact I think I may have read this a great deal sooner had my daughter not told me that the story unfolded as diary entries. This entire book was written in epistolary format, which does not always work for me. Our two children grown, my husband and I now live half the year in Ontario, and half in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.įor more information about me, my research and work, go to my website at I also write a blog, and can be found on the Net in a number of locals:

Settling in Toronto, I worked as a book editor for a decade before moving with my husband and two children to a log house in northeastern Ontario, where, in 1985, I began writing full-time. I am now writing another Young Adult historical novel about a young falconer in Elizabethan England.Īn American-Canadian, I was born in Miami, Florida, and lived in Rio de Janeiro, Berkeley and Chicago before immigrating to Canada in 1970 to teach in an Inuit village in northern Labrador. THE GAME OF HOPE, a Young Adult novel about Josephine Bonaparte's daughter (and Napoleon's stepdaughter), has been published in Canada and the US. Both novels are set in the Court of Louis XIV, the Sun King. The Trilogy was followed by MISTRESS OF THE SUN and then THE SHADOW QUEEN, a 'sister' novel.

The Trilogy has been published in 17 countries. TRILOGY, the internationally best-selling novels based on the life of Josephine Bonaparte, Napoleon's wife.

The many lives and secret sorrows of josephine b