Dorothee Kocks steals intimate details from American history to craft a novel of sensuality, ecstasy and music that reads at the pace of a thriller. Young Chjara Valle is exiled from Corsica sold as a servant to an opium addict in Paris. Music paves the way for her to flee with Henry, her love, to post-revolutionary America. There the new freedoms and Puritan vigor compete for ascendancy. Chjara woos and scandalizes in equal measure with her playing of Benjamin Franklin s glass harmonica, while Henry hides his trade in erotica and forbidden books. Secrets gather and the charge between the lovers weakens as the crowds begin to call for the family s blood. Rooted in historical fact, this debut novel by a gifted international storyteller takes you into a passionate world full of dangerous ideas and dangerous men it is a world you ll not want to leave. Bawdy, geographically vast, heroic, and sensual indeed. Sterling Watson, author of Fighting in the Shade