A local author has discovered the ability to transport people more than 5,330 miles and 70 years into the past.
With rich detail, smooth prose and an alluring story line, author Lynn Sheene captures the sight, taste, smell, texture, sound and energy of Nazi-occupied Paris in her debut novel The Last Time I Saw Paris.
Raised in Cortez and a graduate of Mancos High School, Sheene fell in love with a different time and place after finding an old costume brooch with a stamp from France.
Ive loved Paris for a long time, and I also love the culture and the movies and the music and the jewelry of the (1930s) and (1940s), she said. I found a French art deco broach, and I was curious about its past. ... I started researching a bit, and what I found really captivated me. During the German occupation it was still the City of Light, and it was still had the Louvre and the Toulouse and all the things that you go to visit when you got to Paris, but people were struggling to survive.
The novel is driven by its cunning and willful protagonist, Claire Harris, who flees her unraveling upscale life in New York for a fresh start in Paris, only to find the city in the shadow of the advancing German military. She takes a job as a florist in a small shop and agrees to aid the French Resistance.
Having studied screen writing and film at the College of Sante Fe in New Mexico, Sheene said the strong and sharp-tongued women of the 1930s and 40s silver screen provided the blueprint for the character.
It was important for me to write about a woman who wasnt a victim who didnt need to be rescued, Sheene said. If you look at some of the movies of the 30s and early 40s, you actually had some really strong women characters. They were very smart, kind of hard-talking women that were in popular culture at that time, and for whatever reasons, they kind of faded out.
Sheene was intrigued by the idea of someone who was enthralled by the idea of beauty but who did not understand it until amassing material wealth and realizing its not what she had dreamed of.
And through the course of the book, its more that she realizes what living a beautiful life, or a meaningful life, is, Sheene said.
To properly capture the books historical setting took more than a year of research, during which Sheene dug through memoirs, maps, photos and journalistic accounts of the era.
I spent a decent amount of time in Paris, going to their archives and digging up old maps and old photos and authenticating everything, she said.
Through online writing courses and a critique partner, Sheene spent four years ironing drafts into a polished form. At that point, she said she had little trouble finding an agent and publisher interested in historical fiction.
Sheene said she wrote the novel after deciding screen writing was not for her.
What I really like to do are the descriptions so the reader feels like youre there, she said. So I try to get tastes and sense and smell just everything possible to bring the reader into the scene. Thats just not something you do in screen writing.
Sheene said she would like her readers to take away their own message from the book, but personally thinks its about a woman who changes.
You think about her really gets peeled back to what she really is, she said. It was kind of just taking her through this crucible of occupied Paris to get her to that point. Its really just about having strength and knowing whats meaningful in your life.
Sheene said shes already traveling to Paris to research her next book.
Its about an ex-ballerina who is spying for British intelligence as she works for a cabaret, she said.
The Last Time I Saw Paris was published this year by Berkeley Books. Hard copies and electronic versions are available from retailers Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble and Borders with signed copies available at Marias Bookshop in Durango.
Reach Reid Wright at [email protected].
