I’m a sucker for French history – especially when it has a fiction spin thrown into the mix. And when my options are to stay inside and read or to venture out into a “winter wonderland”, I’m going to pick the book. Every. Single. Time.
This book did not disappoint! In a spectacular web of past and present, Madeline Clavell finds herself the unlikely heroine as she facers her former love, King Louis XIV, to save her current love and their families. When her Huguenot family is targeted by Louis’ Dragoons and her young sons are forced into hiding for fear that they will taken off to Catholic schools, Madame Clavell finds herself returning to the Kings Court of her youth, beseeching her first love to call off his men and leave her family alone.
When her plan backfires, the dragoons make it back to the Clavell estate first. Her husband is arrested. Her daughter is taken away to a convent for Catholic “re-education”. And mother and sons (and other loyal servants and extended family who are also part of the household) are forced to flee to Geneva for their very lives.
Through a turn of events that could only be the providence of the God they trust, the Clavell family find themselves reunited in the end. The author, Golden Keyes Parsons, does a good job accurately portraying the historical era and the struggles that Huguenots faced in France under the “Sun King” (Louis XIV).
It’s the first in the series and my only regret in reading this book is that I have to wait so long for the next in the series to come out!