The Champagne Letters: A Novel - Hardcover

MacIntosh, Kate

 
9781668061886: The Champagne Letters: A Novel
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 1668061880 ISBN 13: 9781668061886
Verlag: Gallery Books, 2024

Inhaltsangabe

Perfect for fans of bubbly wine and Kristin Harmel, this historical fiction novel follows Mme. Clicquot as she builds her legacy, and the modern divorcée who looks to her letters for inspiration.

Reims, France, 1805: Barbe-Nicole Clicquot has just lost her beloved husband but is determined to pursue their dream of creating the premier champagne house in France, now named for her new identity as a widow: Veuve Clicquot. With the Russians poised to invade, competitors fighting for her customers, and the Napoleonic court politics complicating matters she must set herself apart quickly and permanently if she, and her business, are to survive.

In present day Chicago, broken from her divorce, Natalie Taylor runs away to Paris. In a book stall by the Seine, Natalie finds a collection of the Widow Clicquot’s published letters and uses them as inspiration to step out of her comfort zone and create a new, empowered life for herself. But when her Parisian escape takes a shocking and unexpected turn, she’s forced to make a choice. Should she accept her losses and return home, or fight for the future she’s only dreamed about? What would the widow do?

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Kate MacIntosh is always in search of the perfect bottle of wine, a great book, and a swoon-worthy period costume drama. You’ll find her in Vancouver where in her free time she enjoys spending time with friends, teaching writing, and listening to true crime podcasts. 

 

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Natalie Natalie
CHICAGO

PRESENT—APRIL 14

My home looked as if a bomb had gone off, obliterating my life.

I shook my head. That was too negative. My life wasn’t obliterated. Sure, I was leaving my dream home, where I’d painted every room, chosen each stick of furniture, and hand tiled the bathroom, but it was still just a move. People do it every day. There are entire companies dedicated to helping others haul their things from one place to another. So not obliterated, just… off track. I put down the cheese grater and took a deep breath.

After almost a year of therapy, I could hear my therapist’s voice in my head all the time instead of just one hour a week in her office. “How could you reframe this in a more positive way?” she’d ask.

So My life was ruined when the man I loved most in the world, for whom I would have crawled through broken glass, walked away from our twenty-plus-year marriage became Will isn’t the man I thought he was, but his choices don’t define me. My life isn’t ruined; it’s temporarily derailed.

I’m fifty and no one will ever love me again and I will die alone, eaten by the pet cats that will be my sole companions became I don’t know what the future holds, but I’m a vibrant, smart woman who deserves happiness. And a cat if I feel like it.

My husband’s mistress, Gwen, is a lying, cheating, husband-stealing whore, who clearly doesn’t understand the basic concept of women supporting one another and greatly deserves to have all her hair fall out became… Well, my counselor let me have that one. I suspect she figured anger was progress over despair. On the grief scale it was practically kissing cousins to acceptance.

I meandered through the house, searching for the tape gun to seal more boxes. I wanted to be someone who handled divorce with a sassy attitude, took up a new hobby like pottery, and discovered that I could give myself a far better orgasm than Will ever had, but the truth was, I felt abandoned. Not fully part of a new life, but unable to return to the one I’d had before.

My best friend, Molly, took me to a sex shop after Will moved out. I thought it might be good for my “healing journey,” a way to get over the fact that nearly my entire sexual experience had been with Will, unless you counted my prom date, which I definitely did not.

At the shop, an older woman wearing an airbrushed sweatshirt bedazzled with “Number One Grandma” over two kittens sold me a vibrating silicone friend. So, on the upside, I had checked “better orgasms” off the postdivorce list. Now all I needed was a pottery wheel.

My new bracelet sat on the edge of the coffee table. I slipped it on before it disappeared into a box, never to be seen again. That had been another of Molly’s help-Natalie-post-split projects. Worried that I wasn’t bouncing back, she’d invited me to weirder and weirder activities, culminating in a Wiccan weekend retreat for women to find their “soul power.”

The retreat had involved a lot of vegan food and chanting, and I’d ended up buying an overpriced crystal bracelet that was supposed to have magical powers. I couldn’t remember all the details: rose quartz for self-compassion, moonstone for guidance, the rest I’d forgotten. I’d come back from the weekend filled with energy and hope that I was finally fully emotionally above water, but only a few days later I was back to waking up in the middle of the night and pacing in circles trying to figure out the exact moment everything had gone wrong. But maybe the rocks had a bit of magic. I’d been able to at least act like I was holding it together. Until now. Something about having to decide who would get our dented cheese grater had tossed me back into the deep end.

There was a knock on the door, but it opened just as I reached it.

“I brought champagne,” Molly trilled, dangling a bottle aloft and swaying it back and forth as she barreled past me.

I stared out at the SOLD sign in the yard for a moment before shutting the door and trailing after her to the kitchen, my slippers shuffling along.

“I don’t know where the champagne glasses are.” I surveyed the wreck of my home. There were boxes everywhere, along with tumbleweeds of crumpled brown packing paper littering the floor.

“No problem. There’ll be something we can use. Necessity the mother of invention and all that.” Molly worked her way through the kitchen, opening and shutting the mostly empty cupboards. “Ah, here we go!” She pulled out two mason jars and spun the metal tops off with a flick of her finger, sending them skittering across the kitchen island.

“It’s not really a champagne occasion,” I mumbled.

“Every day is a champagne occasion if you want it to be. I splurged for the good stuff, Veuve Clicquot.” Molly picked at the foil covering the neck of the bottle.

In a second the cork would smack into her face. It’s all fun and celebration until someone loses an eye.

“Give me that.” I grabbed a towel and twisted the cork, freeing it with a loud pop.

Molly clapped, took the bottle back, and poured a fizzy mason jar full for each of us. “To new horizons,” she said.

“To new horizons.” I clanked my jar against hers and took a sip.

Molly surveyed the space. “How’s it coming?”

I shrugged. “It’s coming.” Moving was a Sisyphean task. For every box I packed, the remaining items in the cupboard multiplied overnight. Tupperware breeding with baking dishes giving birth to random kitchen gadgets. Everything had to be divided into his, mine, and things to be donated.

“You’ll be ready for the movers?”

“I think so.” I picked up a large serving platter and wrapped it in paper before tucking it into a box already partially filled with Bubble Wrap. I didn’t know why I was keeping it. My new condo didn’t even have a dining room—fancy dinner parties weren’t in my future.

“What else can I do?”

“I don’t think there’s anything. It’s all stuff I need to finish.” Molly had earned her best-friend status over and over in the past few months. Most of our couple friends had drifted away as if divorce might be contagious. But not Molly. She’d helped with everything from picking up boxes to hauling loads to the Salvation Army.

“I took some time off to wrap up things here and get settled in the new place,” I said.

“Good! You must have weeks of unused vacation.” Molly wagged her finger in my face. “You need more balance.”

I took a sip of champagne to avoid saying anything sharp. Molly had been harping on the topic for months. She didn’t seem to understand I liked going to work. Insurance risk evaluation might not be the most exciting field, but there was a certainty to it that satisfied me. A sense of putting things in order, warding off disaster when possible, and returning things to normal when it wasn’t. At my office, everything was still together. Each file in my cabinet had tidy, typed labels. Papers were stacked on...

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Verlag
Gallery Books
Erscheinungsdatum
2024
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
1668061880
ISBN 13 
9781668061886
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
352
Kontakt zum Hersteller
River House
mail@indigo.de

Schlachthofstr. 36 A
Hamburg
21079
Deutschland

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