the Mother-of-Pearl Button: a Novel — Paris 18481871, from Commune to Love Long Delayed

Paris, 1848. Victor Lefèvre is born in a charity hospital, in a city just down from the barricades and hungry to the bone. He grows up in Passy, in a tool shed where the frost draws ferns on the only window, and learns the streets with his fists: which vendor drops vegetables while unloading his cart, what time the baker puts out yesterday's bread.Under the stairs in the courtyard, there is Ninon, the concierge's daughter. She has hazel eyes, she teaches him to read, and she keeps her treasures in the shadows: a crow's feather, a shard of mirror, a mother-of-pearl button.The morning a stagecoach takes her away from Paris, she presses that button into his hand. "So you'll remember that some things shine. Even when you can't see them."Victor never lets it go. It's in his pocket the first time he steals, then when Jules Vallès teaches him that words are the weapons of those who have none, and finally in his left boot when the war of 1870 plunges Paris into siege and the Commune.But a mother-of-pearl button can't tell you whether the girl who gave it is still waiting.