Genre: Historical Fiction
Length: 400 pages
Audiobook Length: 13 hours and 36 minutes
First Published: 2015
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Publisher’s Description
A forbidden love story set on a tropical island about the extraordinary woman who gave birth to painter Camille Pissarro—the Father of Impressionism.
Growing up on idyllic St. Thomas in the early 1800s, Rachel dreams of life in faraway Paris. Rachel’s mother, a pillar of their small refugee community of Jews who escaped the Inquisition, has never forgiven her daughter for being a difficult girl who refuses to live by the rules. Growing up, Rachel’s salvation is their maid Adelle’s belief in her strengths, and her deep, life-long friendship with Jestine, Adelle’s daughter. But Rachel’s life is not her own. She is married off to a widower with three children to save her father’s business. When her older husband dies suddenly and his handsome, much younger nephew, Frédérick, arrives from France to settle the estate, Rachel seizes her own life story, beginning a defiant, passionate love affair that sparks a scandal that affects all of her family, including her favorite son, who will become one of the greatest artists of France.
Quotes from The Marriage of Opposites
Whoever knows you when you are young can look inside you and see the person you once were, and maybe still are at certain times.
Then let us be among those who hope that the future will be less cruel than the past.
As I turned the pages, I felt as if there were bees on my fingertips, for I had never felt so alive as when reading.
I knew what happened in fairy tales. The strong survived while the weak were eaten alive.
Then let us be among those who hope that the future will be less cruel than the past.
About Alice Hoffman
Alice Hoffman is the bestselling author of more than thirty books. Her works include Practical Magic, The Rules of Magic, Magic Lessons, The Book of Magic, The World That We Knew, Here on Earth, The Invisible Hour, The Dovekeepers, and The Marriage of Opposites. She currently lives near Boston, Massachusetts. Visit the author’s website →
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