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Literary / Historical Fiction
Date Published: 12-02-2025
Publisher: Scrivener Quill
It is June 1924 when an inquisitive but skeptical Gemma Danforth graduates from Wellesley College. Despite a loving family, an idyllic New England girlhood, and family summers in the Hamptons, little had assuaged her doubts Now, with college behind them, she and two classmates leave America bound for post war France where they will be immersed in the pulsating culture of European modernism. While in France, she reunites with her Paris based parents, and, in Nice, amidst its creative ferment, she falls in love with Rhys, a British aristocrat and ex-pat journalist. During this year spent along the Cote d’Azur, encounters with Sara and Gerald Murphy, Somerset Maugham, Zelda, Isadora Duncan and others, adds a depth and richness to the ambience of le midi. And so begins the process of displacing her doubts.
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.
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Stephen Asher is a graduate of UCLA and was subsequently educated at the University of Rochester School of Medicine, University of California San Francisco, and St. Catherine’s College Oxford. His professional life was spent as a neurologist, often walking the fine line separating the mind from the brain, a vantage point which encouraged a perspective molded not only by the scientific and the rational but also shaped by the aesthetics of the senses. It is this unity of world view that fashions one of the novel’s central themes.
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.
Contact Links
Website: https://stephenasherauthor.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/stephenwasherauthor
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https://mybook.to/CeremonyofInnocence
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