Finding Victory: The Journey of A Young Girl

Victoire is a young fourteen-year-old girl living in Versailles in the 18th century. The daughter of aristocrats who serve the King and Queen of France, Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette, she has been educated in the ways of the court etiquette, blindly unaware of the trouble that is brewing in Paris and across France. In July of 1789, when the famous Bastille prison is stormed by an angry mob, it sets off the spark for the French Revolution, changing Victoire's life forever. Because of their close connection to the royal family, Victoire's family must flee Versailles to live in exile in a small village in Geneva, Switzerland. This small village, where Enlightenment ideals influenced by Voltaire and Rousseau are an integral part of society, is far from the glittering, dazzling court of Versailles where rank and gossip rule. Victoire has difficulty adjusting to her new home, feeling distant and hated by the citizens of the village, who despise the idea of royalist courtiers making their home there. Amidst her loneliness, she encounters the scientist and philosopher Charles Bonnet, who introduces to her the ideas of the Enlightenment and teaches her science, philosophy, mathematics, and law, things that no woman could learn. This makes her realize the ignorant wealth of the aristocracy that she was once part of as she delves . Meanwhile, the revolution is brewing in France, and Victoire's safety is jeopardy as she watches the life she once knew shattered to pieces. More and more homesick, Victoire encounters a harsh internal battle between her old life of comfort and new life that she is now embracing. When tragedies occur and a new reality far from what she has ever known sets in for her, Victoire must pave a way between her old life of wealth and privilege into the new life of independence and compassion. This novel chronicles the journey of self-discovery amidst the rapidly changing society of revolutionary Europe.