Marie Antoinette was a child of fourteen when her mother, the Empress of Austria, arranged for her to leave her family and her country to become the wife of the fifteen-year-old Dauphin, the future King of France. Coming of age in the most public of arenas, she warmly embraces her adopted nation and its citizens. She shows her new husband nothing but love and encouragement, though he repeatedly fails to consummate their marriage and in so doing is unable to give her a child and an heir to the throne. Deeply disappointed and isolated in her own intimate circle, and apart from the social life of the court, she allows herself to remain ignorant of the country’s growing economic and political crises, even as poor harvests, bitter winters, war debts, and poverty precipitate rebellion and revenge. The young queen, once beloved by the common folk, becomes a target of scorn, cruelty, and hatred as she, the court’s nobles, and the rest of the royal family are caught up in the nightmarish violence of a murderous time called “the Terror.”

Sena Jeter Naslund offers a dramatic reimagining of this truly compelling woman that goes far beyond the popular myth.

“This thriller is rich in brilliant discourses on religion, fanaticism, the meaning of ancient cave art, the speculative future, and love.”
—Library Journal

Sena Jeter Naslund, the New York Times bestselling author of Ahab’s Wife, Four Spirits, and Abundance explores both the dark nature of fundamentalism and the brightness of true faith in her dazzling novel, Adam & Eve. A provocative, eloquent, and deeply compelling story of a woman caught between two warring worlds–science and religion–Adam & Eve raises timely questions about identity, innocence, and sin, and represents a new literary high-water mark for New York Times Notable author and Harper Lee Award-winner Naslund.

This is destined to be remembered as one of the most-recognized first sentences in literature — along with “Call me Ishmael.” And Una Spenser, the transcendent hero at the center of Ahab’s Wife may well become every bit as memorable as Ahab.

Inspired by a brief passage, in Moby, Dick, Sena Jeter Naslund has created an entirely new universe — an epic-scale, enthralling and compelling saga, spanning a full, rich, eventful, and dramatic life. In the “soprano voice” whose absence critics lamented in Moby Dick — the strong intelligent voice of a woman whose life is dominated by the sea — Naslund tells many stories.

She narrates a family drama, as the child Una is sent away to live in a lighthouse to escape the blows of her religion-mad farther. She spins a romantic adventure, as Una finds early passion with a sailor, and disguised as a cabin boy, runs away to sea. She paints a portrait of a real, loving marriage, as through Una’s eyes we see Ahab before the White Whale takes his leg and sends him into madness. Finally, she gives us a new perspective on the American experience, as the widowed Una makes a new life for herself in the company of Margaret Fuller, Frederick Douglass, Emersion and others.

Sena Jeter Naslund has thoroughly imbibed the spirit of Herman Melville, and that spirit permeates every scene of her novel. But great as her debt to Melville may be, Ahab’s Wife stands alone, intact and vital. Inspired by a masterpiece, it is a masterwork in its own right.

“Is it a crime to live? To create happiness for yourself through your own work?”

How do writers and painters get their ideas? And what are the hard realities of such seemingly glamorous and romantic lives? In her groundbreaking new novel, New York Times bestselling author Sena Jeter Naslund explores the transformative power of art, history, and love in the lives of creative women.

It’s midnight on St. James Court, at the heart of which is a beautiful fountain sculpture of Venus rising from the sea. Kathryn Callaghan has just finished the first draft of her novel about renowned painter Elisabeth Vigee-Le Brun, a survivor of the French Revolution who was hated for her sympathetic portraits of Marie Antoinette. Although the manuscript is complete, its author remains haunted by Elisabeth’s experiences, which are revealed in Sena Jeter Naslund’s ingenious novel-within-a-novel interleaved with the chronicle of a day in the life of Kathryn Callaghan. Despite being separated by time, place, and culture, Kathryn and Elisabeth possess similar gifts and burdens: uncompromising aesthetic codes, fierce pride in their artistic expression, and unwavering love and sacrifice for their children. And before the next midnight rolls around, Kathryn will have confronted personal danger as frightening as the butchery that Elisabeth faced during the Reign of Terror. Each woman will be called upon and tested; each will, like Venus, rise triumphantly above the expectations of her world.

In this, her compelling and intimate ninth book, Sena Jeter Naslund presents the reader with an eye-opening alternate vision of The Artist: not an angry young man but a woman of age and hard-won experience who has created for herself, against enormous odds, a fulfilling life of thoroughly realized achievement.