HER OWN WAR

Borchert continues her Château de Verzat series with this historical novel set in the chaos of Napoleonic France.

This novel follows the central characters from the author’s previous series installments—Her Own Legacy (2022) and Her Own Revolution (2023)—into the later stages of the French Revolution and the rise of Napoleon. The story begins in 1797, when the leadership of the French Republic is taxing landowners to pay for endless wars against European adversaries. They also issue decrees expelling aristocrats suspected of collaborating with the nation’s enemies and threatening those who remain with execution by guillotine. Overseeing the vineyards at Château de Verzat, a beautiful estate in the Loire Valley, Geneviève and Louis LaGarde use all of their skills to shield the land from government confiscation and to protect their aristocratic friends, siblings Joliette and Henri de Verzat, from the guillotine. To make matters worse, Henri’s wife, Aurélia, a former enslaved woman from the United States, is pursued and kidnapped by a lecherous slave trader who intends to sell her into servitude as a sex worker. “I lurched as it dawned on me that Aurélia had been sold and would be forced to have sex—with many men,” Geneviève thinks. “A vinegary taste filled my mouth.” Geneviève’s heroic but risky rescue efforts lead to her arrest, and she is imprisoned in squalid conditions while expecting her first child. This compels Louis to navigate France’s rapidly shifting politics and support Napoleon’s mad ambition for military glory in order to save his wife and friends from untold suffering. The path he chooses takes him far from France and exposes Geneviève to greater dangers as she tries to hold her young family together. This novel is well written and enjoyably paced—the chapters effectively alternate between the perspectives and experiences of the major characters. While the narrative stays true to the social mores of the French Revolutionary era, Borchert gives her readers powerful and active female characters who often cunningly use conventional gender expectations to conceal their real motives and actions. Fans of historical fiction will find this novel a most captivating read.

A compelling story of love, war, and fierce family loyalty.