Broken Heart is set against the background of the tumultuous 18th century in Canada and New York, and revolutionary France. The story follows the adventurous, tragic and miraculous life of a French gentleman soldier turned farmer in the Colony of New York whose life with his American wife and children is brutally upended by the War of Independence. Although war is never far away, this is not a story about war in the conventional sense. It is the tale of a man searching to escape tyranny and hoping to find the true meaning of freedom. The novel is based loosely on the real-life Michel-Guillaume St. John de Crevecoeur, born in Normandy in 1735 and destined to lead a fascinating life on two continents as soldier, farmer, loving husband and father, and finally best-selling author and diplomat, mingling with the likes of Benjamin Franklin, Aaron Burr and Thomas Jefferson, before finding himself trapped with his daughter in the web of terror following the French Revolution. Wounded and captured by the British at the Battle of Quebec in 1759, he settles down on his farm with wife Mehetable and three young children in New York’s Hudson Valley. But when war breaks out in 1775 his desire for peace and refusal to take sides along with his French heritage lead to persecution by Patriots and Tories alike. He flees to France, and within two years undergoes a miraculous metamorphosis from broken, unknown man to famous writer and royal officer. He returns to New York in 1783 just in time for Washington’s triumphal entry into the City - only to find tragic news awaiting him…and then, another miracle, in the person of a Boston sea captain descending into the life of his family out of nowhere. The novel will appeal to readers who are intrigued by the folk-ways, events and drama of colonial North America and the revolutionary times in America and France, and who, like St. John de Crevecoeur and his daughter America-Frances, yearn to find the true meaning of freedom.
