Skylark: the secrets of the past are hidden deep under the streets of Paris

Skylark by Paula McLain is a story of Paris and the secrets it holds above and below its streets. In 1664, Alouette Voland is the daughter of a master dyer at the famed Gobelin Tapestry Works. She dreams of creating her own masterpiece and escaping her circumstances. When her father is imprisoned, her efforts to save him leads to her own confinement in the Salpêtrière asylum, notorious for its cruel treatment of the women. Despite the grimness, Alouette finds a group of allies and a possibility of a life she only dreamed about. In 1939, Kristof Larson is a medical student at the beginning of his psychiatric residency in Paris. He befriends his Jewish neighbors who fled Poland. When Nazi forces take over the city, Kristof realizes he is the only hope for the family’s survival with his work as a doctor being put at risk. 

Paula McLain is a new author to me. I enjoy dual timeline stories and Skylark is descriptive as a “mesmerizing tale” where “a woman’s quest for autistic freedom intertwines with a doctor’s dangerous mission” and reveals “a story of courage and resistance that transcends time.” Sounds great, right? The story is beautifully descriptively written; however the story is slow going. As I read, the individual timelines were great as Alouette and Kristof stood in defiance to the power of the day but the connection between the two was very vague and almost non-existent. Overall, the stories were interesting and they could have been their own books and I would have loved them. Skylark wasn’t the dual timeline story that I expected. I enjoyed Alouette and Kristoff’s stories; however, I do not think a dual timeline story was needed to tell their journeys. If you are a fan of Ms. McLain, you may enjoy Skylark. 

Skylark is available in hardcover, eBook and audiobook

The Gray Chamber: one woman's fight to gain her freedom

The Gray Chamber by Grace Hitchcock is another book in her True Color series which features historical stories of American Crime. These stories are strange but true events. In this story, Edyth Foster is a young woman who is a few months from her 25^th birthday and receiving her total inheritance. She has been in the guardianship of her Uncle Boris since her parents were killed in a tragic accident many years prior. Edyth is seen as odd as she likes to ride her velocipede (an early form of a bicycle) and participate in the local fencing club with her oldest friend Raoul “Bane” Banebridge. She isn’t interested in the latest fashions or even following the rules of high society of 1887 New York. Just as Bane and Edyth’s relationship begins to blossom into more than just friendship. Edyth finds herself being examined for mental health issues. Thinking her uncle would never have her committed, she finds herself locked away in New York’s infamous Blackwell’s Island in the Woman’s Lunatic Asylum where no one believes that she has been wrongly committed or even what her real name is. There she meets another patient, Nellie Brown, who seems as sound mind as Edyth does. Will Edyth ever escape this nightmare? Will Bane find a way to set her free and help Edyth expose the truth?

The Gray Chamber is another awesome book in this series. I read The White City (2019) last year and loved Ms. Hitchcock blend of fiction with the historical events. From the opening page, the reader is introduced to a time when mental illness wasn’t understood and women were routinely falsely diagnosed as mental ill in order to get rid of them for various reasons. Some women were wives that husbands found a way to divorce them without scandal or even immigrants who couldn’t speak the language. The drama is intense and exciting. The treatment of the patients is horrifying and heartbreaking. The asylum was officially closed in 1894 after an expose was published and led to a grand jury investigation. There are characters, you know, are up to no good right off the bat and there are characters that surprise you as their motives are revealed. I look forward to reading other titles in the True Color series and I highly recommend The Gray Chamber!

The Gray Chamber

is available in paperback, eBook and audiobook