The Many Lives and Secret Sorrows of Josephine B

Elisabeth Anne MacDonald-Murray is an assistant professor of English at
the University of Western Ontario.

This fictional work, based on and inspired by the eventful and
frequently troubled life of Josephine Bonaparte, wife of Napoleon I, is
in fact only the first instalment in a proposed trilogy that will
document her life from her adolescence in Martinique to her death at
Malmaison at the age of 51. This first volume relates by far the longest
and most obscure portion of this remarkable woman’s personal history.
Beginning on her 14th birthday, the narrative follows her from
Martinique to France, through an unhappy marriage and difficult
separation, into the tumult of the French Revolution. Having endured the
fear and uncertainty of political upheaval, she barely survives
imprisonment, escapes the guillotine that claims her aristocratic
husband, and finally meets and weds the rather uncouth but enigmatic
Bonaparte, a rising star in the new Republic. The novel closes with an
inauspicious wedding night for the unlikely pair, but the promise of an
exciting future.

This is not historical fiction of the Tolstoy or Victor Hugo variety.
Although it skilfully blends fact and fiction, it does not attempt to
provide a sweeping panorama of this tumultuous period in French history.
Rather, it is a highly subjective, intimate, and vivid portrait of a
woman who has for too long been identified solely through her famous
husbands.