The Frenchwoman - Hardcover

Jeanne Mackin teaches creative writing at Goddard College in Vermont and has taught or conducted workshops in Pennsylvania, Hawaii and New York.  She lives with her husband, artist Steve Poleskie, in upstate New York. She is also the author of several novels:  The Sweet By and By, Dreams of Empire, The Queen's War, and The Beautiful American.

Timed for the French Revolution's bicentennial, Mackin's romantic first novel spans 1774 to 1836, tracing the journey of Julienne Forge from Paris to Pennsylvania. Born among prostitutes, Julie becomes a skilled seamstress who, after some traumatic events, finds work with a prestigious couturiereper Web. where she sews for Marie Antoinette. The queen obtains a salon for Julie, also entrusting a fateful diamond to her care. The corrupt Duc d'Orleans wants Julie to spy on the queen, demands the diamond, then denounces her as a whore when she refuses. when she refuses (?) After her aristocratic husband is beheaded by a mob, Julie sails to America, joining the emigre colony of Azilum, aok? commune which kept quarters ready for the royal family. There Julie must make a decision about the compromising gem. The perils of Julie have the flavor of a decorous 18th-century novel, where long-suffering virtue finds its reward in marriage and fruitful domesticity.
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