In this year of grace 1876, I am ninety-nine years old! Thus begins this novel. The life of a woman whose story intertwines with her destiny. Know simply that she will mingle with the main actors of history, both in France and in the United States.
She will meet and associate with Robespierre, Fouché, Napoleon, and in America: Grant, Lee, Sherman, and many other heroes. She tells us her life, describes the characters, some of whom are rather unsavory, contrary to the reputation forged by historians. She is not a historian; she goes against the grain of well-established ‘truths.’
She will kill to defend herself, to take revenge, will cross the Atlantic first as a slave trader and then fall in love with a Black man. Her life is like a billiard ball constantly bouncing off the edges. A man-eater? Lucille Bradsock admits it, she doesn’t hide it. A feminist before her time, she defends the Native Americans massacred by the whites, anticolonialist, she seeks only justice.
Franz Olivier Giesbert takes us to revisit this 19th century, whose history, at least as lived by his heroine, is not exactly the same as that in our textbooks. This is the main interest of this work.
Thierry Jan
