The Marquis' Daughters

In the Shadow of the Guillotine

By: Valerie Anne Hudson

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

Sometimes, the life you think you’ve always wanted turns out to be not at all what you expected …

Set in the late 1700s, the story takes place amidst the French Revolution. Odette is a lowly servant in the Marquis’ household, while Marie-Madeleine is the Marquis’ daughter. They are half-sisters and look alike, but one spends her days emptying chamber pots and scrubbing floors, while the other needs only lift a finger for the world to be at her beck and call. With the Revolution underfoot, Marie-Madeleine disguises herself in Odette’s maid's uniform in order to covertly meet her boyfriend. Odette takes that opportunity to try on Marie’s beautiful gowns, and as the streets of Paris are overtaken by a sudden surge of violence, the two are left living each other’s lives.

Will Marie survive in a world that doesn’t answer to her beck and call? Will she be able to return to her family, or will she perish in the streets among gangs of rioters, thieves and beggars?

Will Odette find happiness in her life as an aristocrat? Will it be everything she has dreamed of, or will she crumble under the constant threat of being arrested and executed as a royalist?

The Marquis’ Daughters is a classic coming-of-age story that thrusts the reader directly into the turbulence of the French Revolution. In the historically accurate descriptions of Paris in the 1700s, the reader will be faced with unexpected and uncanny similarities to life as it is today.