Sad Songs And Gray Dresses

Remember back in high school when things seem so perfect and then they go horribly wrong. Jane starts off depressed because of her parents recent divorce, but starts to feel happy again as she falls in love with "the perfect guy." This story is proof that when you love someone, tell them because they can slip away before you have a chance to say "I love you too."

Jane, Adam, Angela, and Kevin are starting their senior year and college applications are around the corner. Jane meets a new guy named Mark who works at the university near her dad's house. She has dreams of becoming a famous actress, but first, she has to make it past graduation. Her grades, her friendships, and her relationship begin to suffer as Jane loses track of time trying to complete her college applications. Jane's dreams are coming true right before her eyes, but at what cost?

In her first memoir—Immortelles: Memoir of a Will-o’-the-Wisp—Mireille Marokvia described her life growing up in a small village near Chartres, France, in the first decades of the 20th Century. We learned in that beautiful book that the people in her life so long past still live like ghosts in her memory. This extraordinarily sensitive and assured writer brings that same dear voice and sharp vision to bear in her new book. But Sins of the Innocent covers the most difficult years of her life. From Paris in 1939, a young Mireille follows her artist husband, Abel, when he returns to Germany to care for his mother. Once Hitler begins his invasions across Europe the displaced couple must find a way to survive the war in a country they both consider foreign. Abel finally takes work, but it requires extensive travel through the war zones, and so Mireille is left essentially alone. With France lost to her, and horribly misfit in wartime Germany, suspected by her neighbors of spying for the Allies, Mireille has to define a life for herself, a life that is as quiet as possible in a dangerous world. Sins of the Innocent is a lyrical portrait of those harsh years, infused with doubt, anger, and the author’s love of life. These were the years in which Mireille learned the difference between quiet persistence and courage—during WWII in Europe, a time when so many had to find their own small places in history. It was the era that determined who Mireille Marokvia was—and who she still is. Read Mireille Marokvia’s account of the making of the manuscript in “History of a Story.”

Remember back in high school when things seem so perfect, and then they go horribly wrong. Jane is struggling to cope with her parents' recent divorce, but starts to feel happy again as she falls in love with "the perfect guy." Jane and Adam have spent a lot of time together, but never had a friendship with each other. One day that all changes and they go from strangers to lovers. Jane is tempted by a new guy at school who is in the grade below her. He is intelligent and great at acting just like her. Jane will have to choose whom she likes more before it's too late. This story is proof that when you love someone, tell them because they can slip away before you have a chance to say "I love you too."