“Chee’s novel charts Berne’s course from the mid-19th-century snowbound Minnesotan frontier, to the tents of a roving circus troupe, to the bowels of the Tuileries in Second Empire France, to the basket of a hot-air balloon hurtling away from Paris during the bloodshed of the Commune. Along the way, there are cameos from the likes of Giuseppe Verdi, Ivan Turgenev, George Sand, Emperor Napoleon III and Empress Eugenie, the courtesan Cora Pearl, and, most fascinating of all, the Comtesse de Castiglione, Imperial mistress and likely spy.” [Vogue]