About the author
Tracy Chevalier moved to England from Washington DC in 1984 and graduated with an MA in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia. Her best-known book is Girl with a Pearl Earring.
About the book
The compelling story of two women, born centuries apart, and the ancestral legacy that binds them.
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Ella Turner tries hard to fit in to the small, close-knit community of the French town that she has moved to. She even changes her name back to Tournier, and knocks the rust off her high-school French. Isolated and lonely, she is drawn to investigate her Tournier ancestry, with heart-wrenching results.
Isabelle du Moulin, known as La Rousse because of her fiery red hair, is tormented and shunned in her village — suspected of witchcraft and reviled for her association with the Virgin Mary. When she becomes pregnant, she has no choice but to marry into the arrogant Tournier family. Tormentor becomes husband and a shocking fate awaits her — as Ella Turner discovers 400 years later.