Bundle Tickets
–Not Yet Members: $30 (includes general admission ticket + book at 30% discount!)
–Members: $25 (includes discounted general admission ticket + book at 30% discount!)
–Insiders: $20 (includes free general admission ticket + book at 30% discount!)
General Admission Tickets (book not included)
–Not Yet Members: $10
–Members: $5
–Insiders: Free
An irresistible story of a woman remaking her life after her husband’s betrayal leads to a year of travel, art, and passion in Paris, from the award-winning author of This Close to Okay.
Vincent, having grown up as the privileged daughter of artists, has a lovely life in many ways. At forty-four, she enjoys strolling the streets of Paris and teaching at the modern art museum; she has a vibrant group of friends; and she’s even caught the eye of a young, charismatic man named Loup. But Vincent is also in Paris to escape a painful betrayal: her husband, Cillian, has published a bestselling book divulging secrets about their marriage and his own past, hinting that when he was a teenager, he may have had a child with a young woman back in Dublin—before he moved to California and never returned.
Now estranged from her husband, Vincent has agreed to see Cillian again at their son’s wedding the following summer, but Loup introduces new complications. Soon they begin an intense affair, and somewhere between dinners made together, cigarettes smoked in the moonlight, hazy evenings in nightclubs, and long, starry walks along the Seine, Vincent feels herself loosening and blossoming.
In a journey that is both transportive and intimate, Half-Blown Rose traverses Paris, art, travel, liminal spaces, and the messy complexities of relationships and romance, with excerpts from Cillian’s novel, playlists, and journal entries woven throughout. As Cillian does all he can to win her back, Vincent must decide what she wants . . . and who she will be.
About the Author
Leesa Cross-Smith is a homemaker and writer from Kentucky. She is the author of This Close To Okay, So We Can Glow, Whiskey & Ribbons, Every Kiss A War, and the forthcoming Half-Blown Rose. She was longlisted for the 2021 Joyce Carol Oates Literary Prize. This Close To Okay was a Goodreads Choice 2021 Nominee for Best Fiction, a Book of the Month Early Release Pick for December 2020 and a Book of the Month Book of the Year 2021 Nominee, the Good Housekeeping Book Club Pick for February 2021, and the Marie Claire Book Club Pick for March 2021. So We Can Glow was listed as one of NPR’s Best Books of 2020. The novel Whiskey & Ribbons waslonglisted for the 2018 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize and listed among Oprah Magazine’s “Top Books of Summer.” Every Kiss A War was a finalist for both the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction (2012) and the Iowa Short Fiction Award (2012). Find more @ LeesaCrossSmith.com.
Promotional language provided by publisher.