Lost in Paris

DEBUT Hannah Bond is happily living in London and leading literary tours of Jane Austen locales. She has great friends and a job she loves, and she has just met a man who could be the one. When her estranged mother arrives from Florida, Hannah’s life is upended. Marla was an absentee mother whose problems with alcohol and men meant Hannah was primarily raised by her recently deceased grandmother. She arrives on Hannah’s doorstep with items she found while cleaning out her mother’s home, an old brass key and a yellowed deed to an apartment in Paris. Hannah is unable to trust that Marla has changed, but mother and daughter head to Paris and discover an apartment that has been frozen in time since 1940. They learn that Hannah’s great-grandmother Ivy led a secret life in prewar Paris. Ivy hung out with expats including Hemingway, the Fitzgeralds, and Picasso, posed nude as an artist’s model, and fell in love. Delving into Ivy’s life, Hannah and Marla slowly begin to build a new relationship with each other.