Finding Emilie [Paperback]

Woman is born free, and everywhere she is in corsets. . . .

Lili du Châtelet yearns to know more about her mother, the brilliant French mathematician Emilie. But the shrouded details of Emilie’s unconventional life—and her sudden death—are elusive. Caught between the confines of a convent upbringing and the intrigues of the Versailles court, Lili blossoms under the care of a Parisian salonnière as she absorbs the excitement of the Enlightenment, even as the scandalous shadow of her mother’s past haunts her and puts her on her own path of self-discovery.

Laurel Corona’s breathtaking new novel, set on the eve of the French Revolution, vividly illuminates the tensions of the times, and the dangerous dance between the need to conform and the desire to chart one’s own destiny and journey of the heart.1759

“STOP WINNING all the time!” Delphine tossed her cards in the air in frustration that turned to laughter as they cascaded over Lili’s head and fell around her on the bed. The two ten-year-old girls sat cross-legged in muslin nightdresses, curling their bare toes around ripples in the green velvet coverlet. Next to them, a small white dog snorted at the disturbance to his sleep.

Lili picked up the strewn cards and tapped the sides of the pack until they were aligned. “Want to play again? I told you how I do it.”

Delphine sighed. “I know. You remember the cards we’ve already played. Me, it’s king, queen, la-la-la.”

“Well, you can’t win at piquet if you don’t know what’s already happened.”

“All of that remembering is like schoolwork. No more fun than doing sums.” Delphine stood up on the bed behind Lili. “Want me to play with your hair? I’ll get some combs and put it up just like Madame de Pompadour’s.” She picked up Lili’s brown hair and crulc<