First published 2026
Violaine flies from New York to Paris to see her dying father one final time. As he retells the familiar story of his own father Georges, a Belgian Jew whose life became family legend during the Second World War, Violaine finds herself pulled into an obsession with this grandfather she never knew. The tale centers on Georges's rise and fall during the Vichy regime, but Violaine becomes equally fascinated by Choute, an aristocratic woman who was Georges's most significant mistress and who bears an uncanny resemblance to Violaine's own bipolar mother. Working with a local historian, Violaine begins hunting for the actual facts behind the family mythology. Her search becomes a reckoning with the lies and truths that have shaped three generations, including her flamboyant father's questionable parenting and her grandfather's womanizing that marked both wives and children. Through this investigation, Violaine must confront questions of exile and belonging that have defined her family across decades.
Genres: literary-fiction, historical-fiction, 20th-century, 21st-century, family-drama
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: family-secrets, unreliable-narrator
Setting: New York, Paris
Period: World War II, Vichy Regime
240 pages · Hardcover · Penguin Press