Win an ebook + Amazon Gift Card - Ceremony of Innocence

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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