Amandine

(Paperback)

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Description

Betrayal and a double suicide are among the legacies bequeathed by an aristocratic Polish family to a frail baby girl, illegitimately born in 1931. Ostensibly to protect her young daughter from shame, but at least as much to vindicate her own unhealed anguish, the child's grandmother, the Countess Valeska, abandons the infant in a convent in the south of France, convincing her daughter of her baby's death. Bright, curious, fearless, the child Amandine wants to know who she is, who is her mother, and where she comes from. Championed by Solange - her young French governess - and tormented by the aging Abbess and the convent's flock of spoiled upper-class students, Amandine confronts the tragic events of her childhood with unusual courage and grace. As war looms outside the convent doors, Solange and Amandine flee their oppressors, setting out for Solange's childhood home in the north. What begins as a two-day journey by train becomes a perilous years-long odyssey across Occupied France. A story of mothers and daughters and the pardonable - and unpardonable - sorrows which so often plague them, Amandine is a sumptuously told tale of treachery and unexpected love.

Reviews

'A classic, expertly wrought novel of love, loss, and tangled loyalties, Amandine is also a banquet of sumptuous imagery and delicious historical detail.' - Chandra Prasad, author of On Borrowed Wings.

Author Bio

Marlena de Blasi is the bestselling author of A Thousand Days in Venice, Tuscan Secrets, An Umbrian Love Story and That Summer in Sicily. She has been a chef, a journalist, a food and wine consultant and a restaurant critic. She is also the author of two cookbooks of Italian food.