The Mistress

From the gifted young author of A Parisian from Kansas comes The Mistress. Set in 1943, in war-ravaged Paris, The Mistress tells the story of one woman's search for' knowledge, money. and satisfaction. Dr. Emile Bastien, aided by his nurse and mistress, Simone, treats the digestive ailments of the Nazi occupiers. Bastien's increasingly cynical children and bitter wife, miles away in the French countryside, plot separately to obtain the family's fortune, twenty ingots of gold buried in the vineyard, for themselves. As the war progresses and loyalties shift, the doctor is implicated in a Nazi's death and escapes the Germans only to be arrested as a collaborator when Paris is liberated. Simone's lot appears even bleaker, yet she cunningly manages to turn the tables on the entire Bastien family. The Mistress pulls readers into a world where no one's motives are clear, where there is no easy redemption, and where to triumph, one must sink to the depths of duplicity.