Dallas Book Diva

MISTRESS OF THE REVOLUTION By Catherine Delors

The novel is fiction but has its base in actual historical events before, during and after the French Revolution. Love, loss, futility, intrigue, and destiny are all themes.

The central character of the novel is a young French noble woman, Gabrielle de Montserrat. We see Gabrielle removed from the convent where she has spent the first eleven years of her life and taken by her brother to the family home to meet a mother she has never met. The reader glimpses a life of impoverished nobility and a mother who is cold, cruel and calculating. The reader witnesses a young girl fall in love with a young man, Pierre-Andre Coffinhal, who is beneath her in rank and the consequences of an arranged marriage to a rich brute of a Baron. Gabrielle is a survivor. After the death of her brutal husband she flees to Paris where she lives with a distant cousin who introduces her to the intrigues of the French court of Marie Antionette. We watch with fascination the downward spiral toward the bloody Revolution and the fall of the Monarchy.

The brutality of the Revolution makes a fitting backdrop for the novel. The richness of the tapestry that is the history of France is woven seamlessly into the novel. This is a slice of life novel that author Catherine Delors has given breath and a heartbeat through the use of both real and imagined characters. If you enjoy historical fiction, this is a must read. What do you think?

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