Amateur photographer Cady Drake has always been a loner - she spent
most of her young life in the foster care system, and has kept everyone
at a distance. When the one person she let herself get close to, Maxine,
passes away, Cady finds herself completely alone, with only Gus, an
antique carousel rabbit, for company. Maxine always told Cady that Gus
was the work of the renowned Parisian carousel designer Gustave
Bayol, and when Cady finds a secret message hidden inside of her
intricately carved rabbit, she wants to know more. The opportunity to
travel to Paris to photograph carousels for a book presents itself to
Cady, and she travels to the City of Lights to see if she can find out
more about her rabbit and its origins at the Chateau Clement in
Provence...
Fabrice Clement still lives in the Chateau, which is almost totally in
ruins. A reclusive-yet-celebrated author, Fabrice does his best to live
quietly in the chateau with only his dog for company. When Cady shows
up at the chateau with thinly veiled questions about the lost carousel
and Bayol, Fabrice can't help but remember things he had long buried.
During WWII, Fabrice joined the French resistance and fell in love with a
mysterious woman named Paulette. His family's safety was
compromised, the chateau threatened, and it all may or may not have
had to do with his involvement against the Nazis...
But long before Cady arrives in France and before Fabrice is even born,
Maelle, a young apprentice to Gustave Bayol, comes to the chateau at
the turn of the century when Bayol is commissioned to build a carousel
there for the newest mistress of the chateau. There, Maelle falls in love
with Bayol's charismatic assistant, and their romance is doomed from
the start...
THE LOST CAROUSEL OF
PROVENCE by Juliet Blackwell is an interesting novel. First of all,
this book featured something I didn't know much about - Parisian
carousels as a status symbol among the rich at the turn of the century.
The descriptions of the carousels that Cady photographed were
fascinating, as well as the fact that Gustave Bayol was a real carousel
designer. I also enjoyed seeing the chateau through the three different
timelines in the book. It was the common thread throughout the book,
and it was both heartbreaking and captivating to read about the
changes that came to the chateau as time passed. While there were
certain aspects I really enjoyed, this book was definitely a slow burn.
The plot was slow moving, and seemingly "big" reveals were easy to
guess before fully explained. Even though I found the story a little
anticlimactic, I was easily invested in the characters and seeing how
they developed through the course of the book. I cared for Cady,
Fabrice, and Maelle, and wanted to know what happened to them. Juliet
Blackwell clearly has an affinity for France, and THE LOST CAROUSEL OF PROVENCE showcases this
well.
An artist lost to history, a family abandoned to its
secrets, and the woman whose search for meaning unearths it
all in a sweeping and expressive story from the New York
Times bestselling author of Letters from Paris.
Long, lonely years have passed for the crumbling Château
Clement, nestled well beyond the rolling lavender fields and
popular tourist attractions of Provence. Once a bustling and
dignified ancestral estate, now all that remains is the
château's gruff, elderly owner and the softly whispered
secrets of generations buried and forgotten.
But time has a way of exposing history's dark stains, and
when American photographer Cady Drake finds herself drawn to
the château and its antique carousel, she longs to explore
the relic's shadowy origins beyond the small scope of her
freelance assignment. As Cady digs deeper into the past,
unearthing century-old photographs of the Clement carousel
and its creators, she might be the one person who can bring
the past to light and reunite a family torn apart.
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