Between Yesterday and Tomorrow — Charmaine Pauls

In a sunny seventeenth-century chateau in the South of France, the elegant rooms conceal a host of secrets. When Marlien Marais comes to the picturesque village of Castries to claim her family estate, she slowly uncovers a web of deception that lifts the veil on her past and changes her future forever. Shimmering with romance, intrigue, and the elegance that only the French can fashion, Charmaine Pauls' dazzling Between Yesterday and Tomorrow creates a tale of resplendent love -- with a thoroughly French twist. A graphic designer who was raised by her father on a farm in South Africa, Marlien leaves home to survey her inheritance, the sumptuous estate that was luxuriously appointed by her English grandmother, May de la Croix, who had married her French grandfather. Prompted by word of May's passing and a will bequeathing her the chateau, she soon finds herself enmeshed in a community whose deep-seeded connections hark back to days well before her birth. Moreover, Marlien arrives in search of understanding of her long absent mother and estranged maternal family, who vanished from her life in a veil of mystery. From the moment she arrives at the lavish Le Bon Soleil, Marlien meets a cast of characters who alternately confound, cajole, and coax her into a new French life. Yves, her grandmother's second husband, strives to buy her part of the property, and see her out of town. Jean-Christophe Fontaine, an alluring young veterinarian, is intent on capturing her heart, which is grieving from the mysterious loss of her fiancé, Paul van Wyk. At the chateau, the manager Vincent Leclerc and his son David, who possesses supernatural gifts, extend a familial embrace. Marie-Hélène, the taciturn family caretaker, dangles innuendo on the family past, but leaves Marlien hopelessly in the dark. Soon, curious events compel Marlien to come to terms with the guilt and longing that she has so deeply buried eight years earlier after the tragic disappearance of Paul. Her awakening feelings for Jean-Christophe Fontaine conflicts with the loyalty that she had sworn to the only man she thought she could ever love. Amidst it all, the annual summer festival in Arles places her in the midst of the bull run, to be miraculously saved from the crushing hooves by a French gypsy musician, Laurent Regard. Marlien is not faced with choosing between two men, she is faced with choosing between the man in her present and the man of her past. In her epic journey of self-discovery, Marlien must face the past, in order to make way for the future. Worldly, sophisticated, and deep in mystery, Between Yesterday and Tomorrow weaves an elegant, old-world tapestry that is rich in metaphor and emotional power. It's certain to satisfy anyone seeking a transporting story of beauty and heart.