To Bear The Hard Things

Young, idealistic Matelde Carmouche, a daughter of privilege, yearns to change the world. She gets more than she bargained for in this historical tale, To Bear the Hard Things, A Novel of the Paris Uprising.The enemy surrounds Paris at the height of the Franco-Prussian war. Panicked, the government takes flight in hot air balloons. A new government, the Commune, takes control and Matilde joins them. She brings home a street child, Esma, and falls for Xavier, a man her parents disapprove of. A search for a missing child, the hunt for a royalist sympathizer, and federal troops pouring into the city has everyone on edge. Matilde still searches for Esma but escaping the city alive is a more difficult challenge.