Title: The game of hope
Description: France, 1798. Fifteen-year-old Hortense is engrossed in her studies at a boarding school for aristocratic girls, most of whom suffered tragic losses during the tumultuous days of the French Revolution. She loves to play and compose music, read and paint, and daydream about Christophe, her brother's dashing fellow officer. But Hortense is not an ordinary girl. Her beautiful, charming mother, Josephine, has married Napoleon Bonaparte, soon to become the most powerful man in France, but viewed by Hortense at the outset as a coarse, unworthy successor to her elegant father, who was guillotined during the Terror. Where will Hortense's future lie? It may not be hers to decide.
Subjects: Conduct of life, Boarding schools, Juvenile fiction, History, Childhood and youth, Fiction, American literature, Children's fiction, Schools, fiction, Conduct of life, fiction, France, history, fiction
Places: France
People: Hortense Queen, consort of Louis Bonaparte, King of Holland (1783-1837)
Time periods: 1789-1799