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The apt title of this historical novel mirrors the intensity of the bloody, tumultuous French Revolution. The scenario is revealed through the well-researched but dramatized characterizations of three primary figures: radical journalist and politician Camille Desmoulins, statesman and politician Joseph Fouché, and English-American philosopher and political activist Thomas Paine. Author Neeleman successfully distills the complexity of the era through the perspectives and actions of these men and the equally dynamic women—wives and paramours—who loved them and shared their beliefs. The decision to narrate the story through the eyes of these men and women is a wise one, as it limits the scope and helps make sense of this long and complicated era.
Neeleman explores many pivotal events in France from 1789 and beyond into the early nineteenth century. The prologue of the novel opens in a public space of the Palais-Royal on July 12, 1789, where Camille Desmoulins delivers to a crowd of Parisians a passionate call to arms that sparks widespread unrest and leads to the storming of the Bastille two days later. The prologue segues to Chapter 1 when the Marquis de Lafayette awakens Paine, his guest, with the news that King Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette, and their household have escaped their house arrest at Tuleries Palace on June 21, 1791, an act that deepens public distrust of the monarchy and escalates the desire to abolish it, as well as alarming other European royalty. When Lafayette and Paine hit the streets to find out more about the royal family's flight, Neeleman describes the people, settings, and the chaotic ambiance vividly: "All around them are men dressed in a ridiculous uniform—a calico hip-length waistcoat of coarse wool with broad tri-colored stripes called a carmagnole and a red bonnet, ‘the cap of liberty,' emblazoned with the ubiquitous tri-color cockade. Paine wants no part of it… this organized uniformity among civilians feels like a new means of oppression…."
The novel progresses through the spiraling years of the French Revolution to Paine's return to the United States in 1802, and his cool reception by some leaders of the Republic, despite President Thomas Jefferson's invitation and his former popularity. The challenging literary tale is not for the faint-hearted reader who prefers a more popular, genre-like approach to historical novels. At times, the carefully presented events feel somewhat distant, as if taking place in a vacuum, as the long scenes unfold. Neeleman is masterful in describing characters and their characterizations, as well as in initial descriptions of scenes and settings. However, dialogue and inner dialogue always become the primary focus of the narrative flow, and occasionally, a lack of sensory reminders in some lengthy scenes later on leaves the narrative adrift. Still, the author manages to whet his audience's appetite for more, and there will likely be details about the historic figures and the conflicting revolutionary factions of the French Revolution that some readers will want to research online or in history texts as they progress through the novel.
Neeleman's writing ranges from the complex, replete with long phrases and semi-colons, to tighter, more precise prose, and the novel is sprinkled occasionally with lovely, lyrical craftwork that is nearly breathtaking. It is easy to suspend disbelief of any aspect of the tale that relies upon plausible imagination based on historical knowledge, such as dialogue that isn't entirely known. So, unless a reader is a seasoned historian, the encounters and conversations that are sketched out feel authentic. The author's fusion of fact and artistry is on full display in this colorful historical novel. The lessons and morals of the tale remain relevant today, particularly in this era of divisive political discourse and the growing economic gap between billionaires and the average middle- and working-class citizens in Western cultures, whose constitutional republics were originally based on the ideals of the French and American Revolutions.
RECOMMENDED by the US Review
A 2025 Eric Hoffer Book Award Grand Prize Short List book
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