Château de Verzat Series: Book 2
Publication Date: July 14, 2023
A Woman Forges a Treacherous Path to Save Hundreds from the Guillotine
If Geneviève Fouquier-Tinville had the same rights as a man, she wouldn’t have to dress like one, which she does to attend University—forbidden to women. By swearing her commitment to the revolution, she succeeds in convincing her father, the Public Prosecutor who condemns thousands to the guillotine, to hire her as a court clerk. But she intends to earn passage to join her lover, Henri, in America.
Tasked with copying lists of names scheduled for execution, she reads Louis LaGarde, a fallen noble whom she despises for having exposed her as a woman when they both attended University. Believing him innocent, she replaces his name with one already dead, saving his life. But she realizes that unless she forges a treacherous path, hundreds more will perish at her father’s hands.
When a Revolutionary hunts her down, she must accept LaGarde’s help, yet she denies her attraction to him out of loyalty to Henri. She fights for her life and the lives of those she’s come to love, but she must face the truth of her own heart.
Genevieve Fouquier-Tinville is her own revolutionary—not from unrest running rampant in France, but within herself. While a woman, she dons the disguise of a man and becomes Jean Detre to move more freely about the streets of Paris in order to conduct business counter to the government’s rule. Debra Borcherts’s Her Own Revolution is the gripping story of a young woman who risks everything, including her own life, to save innocents condemned to the guillotine by her own father.
The love of Genevieve’s life, Henri, has fled to America amidst the upheaval in France, and while he asked her to go with him, she refuses without a declaration of love which Henri does not give. Left to live with a stepmother who doesn’t love her and a father who is a cruel instrument of the newly empowered government, Genevieve begins a mission of saving innocent lives.
One of the first she saves is Louis LaGarde, condemned to the guillotine for being a nobleman. While acting as one of her father’s clerks, Genevieve removes La Garde’s name from the guillotine list, replacing it with someone already dead. He begs Genevieve to also save his love, Magdaleine, who is with child.
Genevieve faces constant danger and discovery as she sets about saving lives from the guillotine and from the out-of-control revolutionaries who fear rebellion amongst the populous at every turn.
While Genevieve longs for Henri, she faces the dangers and deprivations forced upon her and builds friendships and relationships she wouldn’t have dreamed possible before. Among these new-found relationships lies the possibility of new love, but will she—can she—move forward, or will she hold fast to an uncertain promise from the past.
Debra Borchert’s Her Own Revolution is a fast-paced story that draws the reader in with its tremendous world-building as you traverse the streets of Paris with Genevieve to encounter both loathsome and endearing characters. A more tempered personality change to one of the main characters as well as a less tumultuous timeline, would have strengthened the narrative, and the full power of the story might have been embraced more readily.
Debra’s debut novel, Her Own Legacy, is the first in a series that follows headstrong and independent women and the four-hundred loyal families who protect a Loire Valley château and vineyard, and its legacy of producing the finest wines in France during the French Revolution. Her Own Revolution is the second book in the Château de Verzat series. A graduate of the Fashion Institute of Technology, she weaves her knowledge of textiles and clothing design throughout her historical French fiction. She lives in the Pacific Northwest with her family and standard poodle who is named after a fine French Champagne.
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Thank you for the lovely review. Those endearing characters will appear in Book 3, Her Own War.