Literary / Historical Fiction
Date Published: 12-02-2025
Publisher: Scrivener Quill
She and Rhys return to American where their values collide with antithetical and alien attitudes. It is these experiences that come to challenge long-held beliefs and provide a vivid counterpoint to their recent immersion in the Modernist aesthetic and world view.
Resolved to return to France, Gemma shares a final day in America with Gerald Murphy at his ocean front Hampton estate. As this unhurried afternoon unfolds, it becomes clear that Gemma’s skepticism and doubtfulness have been replaced with a clear-sighted maturity and hardened resolve. The next morning, aboard the Ile de France, Gemma and Rhys sail for France.
Excerpt
“To us, America felt provincial, naïve, and unsophisticated. And there was, and there remains, a certain harshness to daily discourse. By 1920, the Eighteenth Amendment had passed. Prohibition was, and is, in full effect. Although this had been represented as a single-issue campaign, I saw it as a harbinger of evolving intolerance and threatening societal restrictions, ones which I personally found alien.
“But in moving to Antibes we were able to share in the vibrant efflorescence of modern culture that subsequently engulfed all it touched. Some of this seemed to have been a spontaneous outpouring, but was surely catalyzed by the concentration of artistic and creative talent that had populated that small area of southern France.
“I’m confident that some of this free expression was a result of the war’s end. Additionally, the secular traditions of French society, very different from the rigid religious influences plying early twentieth-century America, even encouraged it. It seemed that French culture afforded the liberty for one to be oneself without concern of retribution or shame.
“Likewise, I couldn’t have anticipated that our social circle would become one in which ideas were paramount. That’s not to say that visible and tangible accomplishments, even simple objects, weren’t important. Rather, they became conveyances for the expression of the new ways of thinking and seeing that had permeated our shared reality and become our common language.
“I was aware there were those who thought of us as affluent dilletantes who had traveled
About the Author
Asher and his wife were drawn to Idaho’s arid vistas, glistening rivers, and rugged skylines. As a travelling angler, he has pursued Atlantic salmon throughout their natural range, has sought sea run brown trout in Patagonia, and steelhead in his home waters in the Pacific Northwest. He and his wife have cycled much of France, and, during quiet times at home, he enjoys music and plays cello.
Previously, he has published essays, and short pieces in the British sporting literature. He is a member of the F. Scott Fitzgerald Society, the Barbara Pym Society, and is a proud supporter of PEN America. He lives in Idaho with his wife, adult children, and his bird dogs.
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