Welcome to my website, where I will be blogging about my debut novel, A Thousand Kisses, and posting other short essays. Years spent writing marketing plans and reading excellent books made me wonder if I could tackle a story that had been in my mind for years ...
Plot Synopsis for A Thousand Kisses
When a young woman is betrayed by the people she trusts the most, can she recover and still achieve her dreams?
A Thousand Kisses is a 90,000-word literary novel inspired by a true story. In the early 1900s, living with her family in Châlons-sur-Marne, France, Héloise Caron endures escalating molestation by her stepfather, M. Renard. This ultimately results in a pregnancy, and when her mother, Collette, finds out, she throws her out of the family home, denying any possibility of wrong-doing by her husband, and refusing to speak to her daughter again. Héloise’s story is a sequence of events that persists to this day, challenging us to question why our society continues to tolerate sexual abuse, forcing victims to rebuild their lives, and allowing perpetrators to persist.
Although only 17, Héloise is determined to take responsibility for her child, find a husband, and re-gain her respectability and her mother’s forgiveness. She faithfully sends letters to her mother, signing them mille baisers, a thousand kisses. In 1910, leaving her daughter with a family in northeastern France, and vowing to return as soon as possible, she journeys to Saint-Pétersbourg, Russia to seek her fortune as a French governess. When WW1 unexpectedly breaks out, Héloise is unable to leave Russia, and her daughter is trapped in German-occupied France.
In early 1917, now working as a Red Cross nurse in Saint-Pétersbourg/Petrograd, Héloise meets William Taylor, a chief engineer in the British Merchant Marine. He is suffering from acute pneumonia, and they fall in love while Héloise nurses him back to health. Within a few months, they marry, and Héloise’s dream of a triumphant return to France is on the verge of being realized. Now pregnant and experiencing significant health issues which make her fearful of dying in childbirth, Héloise flees from Petrograd mere weeks before the final October Revolution when the Soviet Bolsheviks gain control of Russia. Evading German U-boats and Zeppelins, as well as the stormy seas of the North Atlantic, Héloise safely reaches Hull, England. She lives with her husband’s family while anxiously awaiting William’s return, and in Feb, successfully delivers their son. As the war eventually closes the page on 1918, Héloise is reunited with her husband and daughter, she receives her mother’s begrudging affection, and the painful memories that have haunted her gradually recede into the past.
Working from original sources and personal documents, and set against the dramatic backdrop of a world ravaged by competing political and social pressures, this epic drama chronicles a young woman’s search for the meaning of family, trust, and forgiveness.
