The Beautiful American

by Jeanne Mackin

Overview

From Paris in the 1920s to London after the Blitz, two women find that a secret from their past reverberates through years of joy and sorrow....

As recovery from World War II begins, expat American Nora Tours travels from her home in southern France to London in search of her missing sixteen-year-old daughter. There, she unexpectedly meets up with an old acquaintance, famous model-turned-photographer Lee Miller. Neither has emerged from the war unscathed. Nora is racked with the fear that her efforts to survive under the Vichy regime may have cost her daughter’s life. Lee suffers from what she witnessed as a war correspondent photographing the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps.

Nora and Lee knew each other in the heady days of late 1920s Paris, when Nora was giddy with love for her childhood sweetheart, Lee became the celebrated mistress of the artist Man Ray, and Lee’s magnetic beauty drew them all into the glamorous lives of famous artists and their wealthy patrons. But Lee fails to realize that her friendship with Nora is even older, that it goes back to their days as children in Poughkeepsie, New York, when a devastating trauma marked Lee forever. Will Nora’s reunion with Lee give them a chance to forgive past betrayals…and break years of silence to forge a meaningful connection as women who have shared the best and the worst that life can offer?

A novel of freedom and frailty, desire and daring, The Beautiful American portrays the extraordinary relationship between two passionate, unconventional women.

Readers Guide Included

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781101635629
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	06/03/2014
Sold by:	Penguin Group
Format:	eBook
Pages:	384
Sales rank:	329,822
File size:	903 KB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Jeanne Mackin teaches creative writing at Goddard College in Vermont and has taught or conducted workshops in Pennsylvania, Hawaii and New York.  She lives with her husband, artist Steve Poleskie, in upstate New York. She is also the author of several novels:  The Sweet By and By, Dreams of Empire, The Queen’s War, and The Frenchwoman.

Read an Excerpt

 “Look.” Lee Miller stood and pulled on her gloves. “Can you come to us this weekend? Come meet Roland. I married, you know. Twice, to be precise. Aziz and I married after you left Paris, but it didn’t last. God, Cairo was so boring. But I think this one will last. Come meet the husband, and little Anthony. Yes, I have a child. A boy. The most beautiful little boy in the world. I’m absolutely besotted.”
Pain knifed my chest. “I didn’t plan a long stay,” I said, trying to sound a touch careless, a little preoccupied with all the things I had to do. “And I didn’t bring evening clothes. In fact, I am wearing my entire travel wardrobe.”

It was a silly excuse but one that would do when the truth was too painful. I didn’t want to see Lee holding her child. Lee, who had never wanted to marry, to have children, now had both husband and son. And my child was lost; her father, the man who should have been my husband, was an ocean away, living with a different wife, a different family.

Lee laughed. “Darling, that doesn’t matter. Wear a sheet if you must. It will be like the old days. Do come! On Friday, take the afternoon train to Lewes and we’ll pick you up at the station. On Sunday, we’ll drive you to Newhaven and you can catch the ferry to France.”

She stood and reached for the bill, signing it rather than leaving cash. I read her signature upside down. Lady Penrose of Poughkeepsie, it said. Lee still had a sense of humor.
I hadn’t yet agreed to the weekend, so she played her strongest card.

“Pablo will be there,” she said, and was out the door before I could say no.

Pablo. When I had to leave Paris, Pablo Picasso had been the one to help me, not because we were close—we were not—or because he was particularly kind to young girls in trouble—he was not. It had merely been one of those life-forming coincidences. That day, as I stood on the Pont Neuf wondering where I would go, what I would do, he had come toward me on his way to somewhere. There was just enough kindness in his voice when he asked, “Ça va?” that I sobbed my story out to him. He had already known, of course. That’s the sad truth of betrayal. It makes a poor secret except to the betrayed.

He paused, then gave me a piece of paper on which he’d written the name of a friend who would take me in. He would write to her the very next day, he promised, and I fled to his friend, Madame Hughes, in Grasse. Seventeen years ago. A war ago. A child ago. A lifetime ago.

Lee had introduced me to Pablo, and to many others. She had given, and she had taken. I looked out the window and watched Lee cross the street with that determined stride of hers. She waved, grinned, and disappeared into the crowd.

I stared at the card, wondering how much the train to Lewes would cost. No one ever said no to Lee Miller, and if she thought they might, she simply never asked the question. Of course, there was always a first time. Why should I interrupt my search for Dahlia to play houseguest for the woman who had, years before, derailed my dreams? Because the search is over, a dark voice said in my head. There is nowhere else to look.

I rose to leave the restaurant, walking in the wake of Lee’s perfume. I smelled it, then, that bottom note I hadn’t noticed before. Camphor, eucalyptus, and the salty, acrid bottom note of merbromin. Medicine. The smell carried me backward.

Scents are memories’ bid for immortality; they keep the past alive.
 

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

Praise for The Beautiful American

"Mackin’s ability to re-create history and to create believable characters and situations makes her new work a transfixing story that is hard to put down. Sure to be loved by fans of Mackin and of the historical novel; very highly recommended."—Library Journal 

“Readers will rank [it] right up there with The Paris Wife…. A brilliant, beautifully written literary masterpiece…”—New York Times bestselling author Sandra Dallas

“Will transport you to expat Paris… and from there take you on a journey through the complexities of a friendship…breathes new life into such luminaries as Man Ray, Picasso, and, of course, the titular character, Lee Miller, while at the same time offering up a wonderfully human and sympathetic protagonist in Nora Tours.”—Suzanne Rindell, author of The Other Typist

“Leaves its essence of love, loss, regret, and hope long after the novel concludes."—Erika Robuck, author of Fallen Beauty

“Achingly beautiful and utterly mesmerizing… Sure to appeal to fans of Paula McLain's The Paris Wife and Erika Robuck's Call Me Zelda, or indeed to anyone with a taste for impeccably researched and beautifully written historical fiction.”— Jennifer Robson, author of Somewhere in France

“An engaging and unforgettable novel. I couldn’t put it down.”—Renee Rosen, author of Dollface

"An exquisitely imagined and beautifully rendered story of the talented, tragic, gorgeous Lee Miller."—Becky E. Conekin, author of Lee Miller in Fashion

“Beautiful…A fascinating account of a little-known woman who was determined to play by her own rules.”—Historical Novel Society

“Lovers of the film A Midnight in Paris will definitely enjoy this.”—Chick Lit Plus

“[An] exquisitely depicted story of love, betrayal, forgiveness.”—Crystal Book Reviews

“An engrossing novel…Compulsively readable.”—BookNAround

Editorial Reviews

Praise for The Beautiful American

"Mackin’s ability to re-create history and to create believable characters and situations makes her new work a transfixing story that is hard to put down. Sure to be loved by fans of Mackin and of the historical novel; very highly recommended."—Library Journal 

“Readers will rank [it] right up there with The Paris Wife…. A brilliant, beautifully written literary masterpiece…”—New York Times bestselling author Sandra Dallas

“Will transport you to expat Paris… and from there take you on a journey through the complexities of a friendship…breathes new life into such luminaries as Man Ray, Picasso, and, of course, the titular character, Lee Miller, while at the same time offering up a wonderfully human and sympathetic protagonist in Nora Tours.”—Suzanne Rindell, author of The Other Typist

“Leaves its essence of love, loss, regret, and hope long after the novel concludes."—Erika Robuck, author of Fallen Beauty

“Achingly beautiful and utterly mesmerizing… Sure to appeal to fans of Paula McLain's The Paris Wife and Erika Robuck's Call Me Zelda, or indeed to anyone with a taste for impeccably researched and beautifully written historical fiction.”— Jennifer Robson, author of Somewhere in France

“An engaging and unforgettable novel. I couldn’t put it down.”—Renee Rosen, author of Dollface

"An exquisitely imagined and beautifully rendered story of the talented, tragic, gorgeous Lee Miller."—Becky E. Conekin, author of Lee Miller in Fashion

“Beautiful…A fascinating account of a little-known woman who was determined to play by her own rules.”—Historical Novel Society

“Lovers of the film A Midnight in Paris will definitely enjoy this.”—Chick Lit Plus

“[An] exquisitely depicted story of love, betrayal, forgiveness.”—Crystal Book Reviews

“An engrossing novel…Compulsively readable.”—BookNAround

From the Publisher

Mackin fictionalizes the lives of photographic artists Man Ray and his mistress, Lee Miller. The setting is fascinating, the real and fictional characters intriguing, and the story appealing. What will hold readers’ interest is the mystery of a missing daughter and the intersection of two very different women’s lives. Mackin builds a gripping plot.”

RT Book Reviews (4 stars)

The Beautiful American, which readers will rank right up there with The Paris Wife, takes readers from the giddiness of the flapper era to the grittiness of World War II. It is a brilliant, beautifully written literary masterpiece. I love this book!”

New York Times bestselling author Sandra Dallas

Jeanne Mackin blends a tale as intoxicating as the finest fragrance. Spanning wars both personal and global, A Beautiful American leaves its essence of love, loss, regret, and hope long after the novel concludes.”

national bestselling author of Fallen Beauty Erika Robuck

An exquisitely imagined and beautifully rendered story of the talented, tragic, gorgeous Lee Miller.”

author of Lee Miller in Fashion Becky E. Conekin