First published 2024
Sadie Smith arrives in France with a fabricated identity and a clear mission. The thirty-four-year-old American agent has seduced Lucien, a wealthy young Parisian, through a staged encounter that he believes was chance. Her shadowy contacts in business and government want her to monitor a commune of French subversives in the countryside. They want her to stir up trouble, then escalate from there. Sadie operates through calculated deception, manipulating everyone around her with ruthless precision. She believes she controls every relationship, every conversation, every outcome. But in this landscape of ancient caves and old farms, she encounters Bruno Lacombe, an enigmatic mentor who guides the young activists through emails alone. Bruno preaches that salvation lies not in revolution but in returning to humanity's distant past. As Sadie reads Bruno's messages filled with alternative histories and personal tragedy, she finds herself drawn into his worldview. The woman who prides herself on being the ultimate manipulator discovers that she may be the one being seduced. Bruno's ideas begin to work on her mind in ways her training never prepared her for.
Genres: literary-fiction, historical-fiction, suspense, mystery, espionage, political-thriller
Vibes: dark, emotional, intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: enemies-to-lovers, unreliable-narrator
Setting: France, Paris
Period: 21st-century
416 pages · Kindle Edition · Scribner
Content warnings: gaslighting