The compelling story of two women, born four centuries apart, and the ancestral legacy that binds them. Ella Turner does her best to fit in to the small, close-knit community of Lisle-sur-Tarn. She even changes her name back to Tournier, and learns French. In vain. Isolated and lonely, she is drawn to investigate her Tournier ancestry, which leads to her encounter with the town's wolfish librarian. Isabelle du Moulin, known as Le Rousse due to her fiery red hair, is tormented and shunned in the village -- suspected of witchcraft and reviled for her association with the Virgin Mary. Falling pregnant, she is forced to marry into the ruling family: the Tourniers. Tormentor becomes husband, and a shocking fate awaits her. Plagued by the colour blue, Ella is haunted by parallels with the past, and by her recurring dream. Then one morning she wakes up to discover that her hair is turning inexplicably red…
In Tracy Chevalier's first novel, we follow two very different women born centuries apart living in the same rural area of France. In an entertaining mix of historical fiction and detective story, Chevalier uses her proven talents to make us care deeply about the conjoined fates of seventeenth-century Isabelle du Moulin and twenty-first-century Ella Turner. Narrators Carter and Marceau Clarke both read terrifically well. They infuse their respective characters with vivid personalities and make the extra characters for which they are each responsible believable--from aged French male peasant to 10-year-old girl. As an added bonus, all the French accents are spot-on. An utterly involving listen. A.C.S. (c) AudioFile 2003, Portland, Maine
About the Author
Tracy Chevalier is the author of GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING and FALLING ANGELS. She holds a graduate degree in creative writing from the University of East Anglia. An American originally from Washington, D.C., she currently lives in London with her husband and son.
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