The Other Side of Paradise

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London, 1920: a young American heiress, Jean Buckman, arrives into a society decimated by war but clinging on to the status quo. Jeans father is the new Ambassador, her mother a New York society titan of hungry ambition. To escape the shadow of her parents, Jean marries Edward Warre, inheritor of a once great, now struggling estate: he is engaging but complex, a product of the system, riven with insecurity. As Jeans marriage falters, she spends a summer in the South of France, an undreamt-of world of freedom and liberation. She embarks on an affair with an American writer, the repercussions of which will dominate the rest of her life. She becomes pregnant: impossible to hide from her husband. He has no choice but to pretend to the outside world that the boy is his own he needs Jeans money and she his silence. The heir to his estate, Harehope, is not of his blood; the spare that follows, is. The Other Side of Paradise tells the heart-breaking story of a family battling against the shackles of inheritance: a pair of brothers who must fight against the truth they cannot know and the rules society has ordained for them; a mother whose love is the source of their greatest happiness but ultimately of their undoing.

Author Bio

Vanessa Beaumontstudied Classics at Oxford University before joining Short Books, the independent publisher in London, where she was Commissioning Editor for 8 years, editing both fiction and non-fiction. She co-ran the literary agency Prentice Beaumont, before deciding to take the reckless decision to embark on a novel. She lives between West London and Northumberland, and is am married with three children.