Jessica, a
thirty-four-year-old woman, is spending time in Paris with her
roommates from Denver, Vonda and Patrick. Patrick is staying in
France where he has been studying, but Vonda and Jessica are headed
home. There’s a choice of what to do on the last night in Paris. Patrick has
tickets to an art show, Vonda has tickets to a concert at the
Bataclan Theater. Although she’d rather be with Patrick, Jessica
accompanies the much younger Vonda to the Bataclan. It turns out to
be a terrible decision.
Vonda and Jessica
are caught in the massacre that night where gunmen rush into the
theater and gun down the concert goers. Jessica escapes, but is
wounded. She recovers but is terribly shaken by the event. Although
her parents want her to come home, Patrick, who has been with her
throughout her recovery, encourages her to stay and take the trip
through southern France they had planned.
Patrick is a
“picker.” He loves going to flea markets and out of the way
antique stores to find valuable antiques. Once settled in their bed
and breakfast, he and Jessica find a rundown antique store. It’s a
paradise for Patrick, and Jessica finds a beautiful sewing box that
once belonged to Adeline, a Huguenot girl in the 1700s. As Jessica
continues to suffer from PTSD, the box becomes a way to deal with
life again.
This story is told
between two time periods, but unlike many novels with this pattern,
the historical portion is limited to excerpts from Adeline’s diary
that Jessica finds hidden in the false bottom of the sewing box. I
prefer this way of telling a two time period story. It puts the focus
sharply on one time or the other. In this case, the story is
Jessica’s.
The descriptions of
the massacre are horrific. Although very well written, I found them
hard to read because the pictures are so immediate. I recommend this
book. It’s filled with characters you come to admire and the plot
twists keep you reading.
I received this book
from BookLook Bloggers for this review.
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