| Abstract |
"A sweeping and stunning novel what happened to the poet Elizabeth Bishop during three life-changing weeks she spent in Paris amidst the imminent threat of World War II. June 1937. Elizabeth Bishop, still only a young woman and not yet one of the most influential poets of the twentieth century, arrives in Paris with her college roommate. They are in search of an escape, and inspiration, far from the protective world of Vassar College where they are expected to find an impressive husband, a quiet life, and act accordingly. But the world is changing, and as they arrive in the City of Light, the larger veil of fascism and occupation are looming large. In Paris, they meet a community of upper crust ex-patriates, who not only bring them along on a life-changing adventure, but also into an underground world of rebellion that will alter the course of their lives forever. Paris 7 A.M. imagines 1937--the only year Bishop, a meticulous keeper of journals, didn't chronicle--in vivid detail and brings us from Paris to Normandy where Bishop becomes involved with a group saving Jewish orphans and delivering them to convents where they will be baptized as Catholics and saved from the looming horror their parents will face."--Publisher. |
