Willa Gibbs (1917–1999)

This book looks like I would have bought it at a flea market or garage sale, but since I don't go to those events, I have no idea where I picked up this book. This book was a little gem in disguise. It is the story of Dr. Charlot Florian and his wife, Diane, during the time of the Directory, which followed the Committee of Public Safety's rule in Revolutionary France. Dr. Florian somehow finds himself on a boat to Sinnamarie, a French penal colony in Guiana; also known as the "guillotine of the soul." Events that unfold really do break both the Dr. and his wife. In the second half of the book Napoleon is featured.

I'm giving this book only 4 stars because I was confused by one of the sentences in the last paragraph of the book: "Charlot and Diane were strolling in the Garden in Gehenna...." They weren't in Gehenna, but in Alexandria, Egypt. Therefore is the reader to conclude that: 1) their existence was hellish (as Gehenna is the Hebrew word for hell) or 2) they died and went to hell? or 3) something else?

The print on this book was so small that I could read it only in small doses even with bifocals. It is smaller than a font size 9.

Fiction based on the French Revolution is at the top of my list of reading materials.

I will look for other books by this same author. 278 pages 4 stars… (más)