Where would you go if your convictions or your family’s roots endangered your life in your homeland?
What would you do if the people you counted on to give you refuge turned out to be as intolerant as the rulers of your native land?
A decade or two ago, these questions might have been relegated to distant history, but today they are top of mind for a shocking number of people in our world.
Find Me in the Stars, Jules Larimore’s second novel about 17th-century French Huguenots and their struggles, now takes on a new relevance in the 21st century:
• What would I have done facing the Huguenots’ predicament?
• How was their situation similar to one that people I care about, or even I, confront?
This is an adventure- and suspense-filled story of 17th-century Huguenots (French Protestants) driven into hiding or away from their remote homeland, the Cévennes region [once called Languedoc, now (since 2016) Occitànie] by religious persecution.
Their struggle to survive includes:
• disagreements within their communities about the correct course of action
• betrayal by supposed friends and supporters
• above all, the enmity of France’s egomaniacal king, Louis XIV, who used his nation’s wealth, wars, tariffs and religious persecution to make himself the ultimate authoritarian, declaring “L’état c’est moi.” (I am the state).
Characters:
• Jehan BonDurant—protagonist, he was torn away from his Huguenot parents as age 7 and converted by Dominicans. Trained as an apothecary, he inherited his parents’ properties and the responsibility to administer them wisely.
• Amelia Auvrey—Jehan’s muse; a free-spirited holy woman and healer
Both Jehan and Amelia wrestle with the conflict between their idealistic and their very human selves. The author also places both in situations of great danger, making those scenes difficult to put down.
• Commandeur Timoleon—head of Order of St. John of Jerusalem Knights Hospitaller Commandery, friend and ally to Amelia
• Menina Elise—wise woman, healer, midwife, and Amelia’s grandmother and mentor
• Abbé du Chaila—French Catholic Abbé of Chaila, merciless persecutor of Huguenots
• Pasteur Guillaume Barjon—Jehan’s maternal uncle, a strict Calvinist pastor and leader of a group of refugees in Aarau and Germany
• Charles Sieur de Sailly—French nobleman refugee in service of William III of England and Lord Galway as an agent to organize and recruit Huguenots for resettlement schemes
Strengths:
The author skillfully weaves fictional and real-life characters and events into an exciting story, setting it within a vivid background (topography, customs, architecture, clothing, food) that immerses readers in that time and place.
Weakness:
Although this novel can be read as a standalone, readers will more fully understand the backgrounds and relationship of Jehan and Amelia if they have read The Muse of Freedom, the first novel in The Cévenoles Sagas series.
Content review:
This novel includes references to violence by French dragonnades against Huguenots, threats of sexual violence against a woman, and an unmarried couple’s sexual encounter.
My recommendation:
Find Me in the Stars will appeal to readers who enjoy a suspenseful story grounded in history, with characters they can root for, as they reveal both their foibles and their strengths.
Reader, can you share a brief mention of a heroic character in your family’s past?
Keep reading for an interview with Jules Larimore, author of Find Me in the Stars!
Interview with author Jules Larimore:
What drew you to focus Find Me in the Stars on this particular moment and characters?
The period I write about in this novel chose me, actually. I’ve always had a love for the Middle Ages and Renaissance, yet felt a calling for over twenty years to write a story inspired by Jean Pierre Bondurant dit Cougoussac—my 8th great grandfather—a French Huguenot ancestor from a minor noble family. Jehan’s motivation to give up the estate he inherited and flee the country always intrigued me, and I knew there were many sides during this divisive period that needed to find a voice.
Once I dove into the research, I became utterly fascinated with this overlooked period in the late 17th century that led up to the Camisard War. I blended it with Cévenole magic lore into a coming-of-age story and family saga of courage, tenacity, and the power of love, hoping to transport the reader to this thrilling and obscure slice of French history.
How did you discover details of that time and place?
I began research for this series twenty-plus years ago shortly after I learned about my connection to Jean Pierre Bondurant. The first thing I did was to take a trip to Genolhac (Genouillac), France. It is important to me to embody the setting and culture first, to experience a place through its flora and fauna, geology and architecture, and to hear the voices of the people who lived during the era I am writing about, even before I do much other research.
I have returned to the Cévennes a few times in recent years and I was invited to visit, (even spending the night on my last visit) the old Bondurant maison de ville (townhouse) in Genolhac, whose owner shared a few secrets about the house and what transpired there. I have also spent much time in the Museé du Desert to learn about the tools, furnishings, clothing, weapons, and religious artifacts that were in use in the late 17th/ early 18th centuries. In addition, French Departmental archives became a primary method for research. One of my best sources has been Les lien de chercheurs Cévenols.
Did you discover surprises while researching this novel?
I did! Not to give away any spoilers, one was a secret element at Jean Pierre’s townhouse in Genolhac that aided his family in conducting clandestine Huguenot prayer meetings which were outlawed by Louis XIV. Hopefully readers will discover that when they read the first book in the Huguenot Trilogy, The Muse of Freedom.
Another surprise occurred after I connected with a distant French cousin who shared documents showing that Jean Pierre’s father had been imprisoned for a month in the Tour de Roi in Uzès.
How much did you have to deviate from history to create a satisfying story?
The timeline, locations, and the majority of characters are true to history. Although several characters are the creation of my imagination to bring a diverse, multi-layered experience to the story. But even the historical characters had to be used fictitiously, acknowledging that no one can ever entirely know the true story of bygone eras. So, I filled in gaps using extensive research on the history of the era and took my characters on journeys that seemed befitting based on my personal analysis and inspiration.
Since novels with a bit of romance seem to attract more readers I had intended to develop a fictional love interest for the character Jehan, but I didn’t know until I opened up to it that it would be a free-spirited, mystic holy woman. My research led me to discover that healers who practiced ancient healing techniques were common to the Cévennes Mountains.
What were the most challenging aspects of writing this novel?
Since most of the primary source documents and many of the scholarly papers I used for research are in other languages—French, German, Dutch—they had to be translated. If it were not for the translation programs now available, I’m not certain I could have completed enough research to have developed this novel properly.
And then there was also the editing process—one of the most challenging aspects of writing.
What did you enjoy about writing this novel?
The research is always my first love—traveling to the locales and studying the history. But I love the moments when I sit down with my laptop on my patio and let the characters speak to me. After the research, I can immerse myself in their world and channel their thoughts and feelings. That’s when it feels like magic.
What do you hope readers will take away after reading Find Me in the Stars?
The themes in Find Me in the Stars are very relevant to events happening in the world today—bigotry, authoritarianism, persecution—so the timing for it has been meaningful. Writing this novel gave me the opportunity to convey the positive qualities of courage, tenacity, and transcendent vision while the entire Huguenots trilogy contains overarching themes of love, compassion, and tolerance. I hope that after reading this novel, readers will have a new awareness for the Huguenot refugees and hold a place in their hearts for all people, past and present, who have struggled to escape persecution, oppression, violence, war, or poverty.
Is there anything else you’d like to share with my readers?
I will be presenting this September at the Historical Novel Society conference in Devon, UK alongside two French historical authors, Keira Morgan and Michèle Callard. We are part of an authors’ collaborative who share history articles on France’s Splendid Centuries Facebook page. Our presentation is on “The Allure of French Historical Dramas on Screen and in Novels”.
As part of our presentation, we will be sharing the results of a survey running through March 25 asking “What do YOU like about France & Historical Fiction? We’d be happy to have your readers participate. It is short, only about 5 minutes, and it is anonymous. Anyone wanting the results can simply provide their contact info in the survey and we will send it to them after we compile the data. Here is the link for anyone who is interested.