VIRAGO

Cool, calm Claude Enjolras has lately found herself struggling to keep control over her complicated life.  For years she has been living disguised as a man in order to participate in the underground revolutionary movement of 1820s Paris, and her hard work has just begun to win her the respect of her colleagues.  But when her secret is inadvertently revealed to her lieutenant, it sets in motion a chain of events that will force Enjolras to come to terms with her family, her friends, her political allies, and herself.  Through five crucial summers of her life, one woman describes how her faith, courage, and love are tested in the flames of a revolution that will change everything.

 

VIRAGO is a new story based on characters from Victor Hugo's classic novel Les Misérables.  It began as an experiment to see what would be the wider consequences of altering one little canonical detail (Enjolras’ sex), but it turned into an intimate exploration of gender and sex, of duty and emotion, of the nature of friendship and love, and above all, of a complex character who took on a life of her own and asserted herself in ways I never could have predicted. 

 

 

The novel will be available through Amazon publishing on March 14, 2015.