Versailles

This brilliantly acclaimed novel tells the story of an expansive spirit locked in a pretty body and an impossible moment in history. As VERSAILLES begins, 14-year-old Marie Antoinette is traveling from Austria to France to meet her fiancÈ, the mild, abstracted Louis. He will become the sixteenth Louis to reign in France, and Antoinette will be his queen, although neither shows a strong inclination toward power, politics, or the roles that they have been summoned to play. Antoinette is hemmed in by towering hairdos, the xenophobic suspicion of her subjects, the misogyny of her detractors, and the manifold twists and turns of the palace she calls home. The novel moves from room to room, from garden to fountain, driven by the relentless engine of time. Antoinette gives birth to four children, two of whom will outlive her; she falls in love; she dies at the guillotine. VERSAILLES is an enchanting meditation on the soul's true journey, at once wittily entertaining and astonishingly wise.