by Darrow Farr
First published 2025
Severine Guimard pedals her bike through Corsica on a warm summer night in 1993. The seventeen-year-old French-American politician's daughter dreams of fame while her graduation approaches. Three militants fighting for Corsican independence grab her from her bike and demand ransom money. When the negotiations fail, Severine finds herself stuck with her captors Bruno, Tittu, and Petru in the island's mountains. She decides to win them over with her charm. The handsome intellectual Bruno leads the group. Tittu studies at university. Even tough Petru starts to like their prisoner. Severine discovers their political ideas about Marx and Fanon. Her natural talent for attention combines with these new beliefs. She becomes the public face of their radical cause on television worldwide. The summer brings both romance and violence as Severine takes on the most important performance of her young life.
Genres: drama, literary-fiction, historical-fiction, 20th-century, contemporary, thriller
Vibes: dramatic, intense, suspenseful, thought-provoking, transformative
Tropes: captive-romance, coming-of-age, forced-proximity, ideological-awakening
Setting: Corsica, France
Period: 1993, Summer
416 pages · Paperback · Penguin Books
Content warnings: kidnapping, violence