Marie Antoinette was a child of fourteen when she was made to leave her family, her country, her home, and go to France to become the wife of another child, the fifteen year-old Louis the XVI. Suddenly, far from home and thrust not only into the role of woman, and wife, but of Queen, Marie Antoinette lived an astonishing, though short existence.

The book is based on Sena’s impeccable research and though fictionalized, reveals Marie Antoinette as an entirely different person than the one who supposedly said of the starving French peasants, “let them eat cake”. Marie Antoinette in fact, rebelled against the extravagances of the court but as an outsider, was the target of an uprising that finally, decided her fate.

Sena Jeter Naslund, who brought to life a fictional character called “Ahab’s wife”, now draws an incredible portrait of a woman we think we know-Marie Antoinette-and in her, has created one of her most memorable and moving characters.

Sena Jeter Naslund is Writer in Residence at the University of Louisville, program director of the Spalding University brief-residency MFA in Writing, and current Kentucky Poet Laureate. Recipient of the Harper Lee Award and the Southeastern Library Association Fiction Award, she is editor of The Louisville Review and the Fleur-de-Lis Press. She is the author of the novels Ahab's Wife, Four Spirits, and Sherlock in Love and a collection of stories, The Disobedience of Water. She lives in Louisville, Kentucky.