Synopsis "A Citizen of the Country (The Reisden and Perdita Mysteries) (in English)"
A man in love is a man afraid.Paris, 1911. André du Monde, director of a famous horror theater, has married a young girl from the country. As a child, André experienced something terrible. Now he can't be intimate with anyone except by frightening them. His wife is frightened too. Because André keeps telling her she's going to poison him...Alexander von Reisden, doctor to the mad and André's friend, seems to have outlived his own terrible past. He has a wife and a son, and work he loves. But now he has to help André, or lose everything too.A man in love, a man afraid...a fight against terrible odds...a cursed film, a cursed love, and the shadows of war...A Citizen of the Country."A virtuosic fusion of speculative history, boldly stylized character drawing, and intricately plotted rousing melodrama...Fiction just doesn't get any more entertaining and satisfying than this. A bloody triumph." - Kirkus Reviews (starred review)"A seductive storyteller...Taking inspiration from the chalky hills, the Roman history, the witchcraft legends and local landmarks that would soon be reduced to rubble in the war, [Smith] finds the ideal setting for resolving the sad, strange mysteries that have haunted Reisden since childhood." - The New York Times Book Review"Though full of authentic detail, this isn't a typical 'historical novel,' but rather proof that certain human conditions--the public and private face of heroism, the complicated love we feel for family--are the same no matter the century." - Entertainment Weekly (Editor's Choice)"[Smith] fills the third installment with endlessly satisfying plot twists, historical verisimilitude, and character development--and still manages to keep her eye on the overarching question: not so much "What country?" as "Where do I belong?"...A Citizen of the Country illuminates a society on the brink, a way of life about to be lost forever...and one man's journey, by the hardest roads, home to his family." - Detroit Free Press (four stars)
