Harriet Klausner's Review Archive
Though very successful as a vintner and happily married with three children, Casimir de Chateauneuf is bored. He leaves his family behind in Chateauneuf to travel to Paris where he maintains a mistress. While there, Casimir enters Orientalia, a shop with goods from the East. When he sees the miniature of a young woman, he obsesses over the unknown female with a blue eye and a yellow eye. He quickly learns the identity of the artist and begins to trail the man, who has headed home to Alexandria, but his quest fails and Casimir returns to France a broken man.
Not long afterward, Casimir becomes involved with the opening of the Suez Canal. On his return to Egypt he meets the lady in the portrait, Kukla, who has been lent to the French by the Sultan as a translator. She knows he is the love who she dreamed was the one dreaming of her. Casimir and Kukla begin to fall in love, but though East meets West at the Isthmus, love might not survive the shrinking of the world.
THE PALACE OF TEARS is an enjoyable historical romance that brings life to the opening of the Suez Canal in 1868. The plot belongs to the characters, especially Casimir, who will give up his material world to attain his destiny. Readers will immensely enjoy this novel while wondering how this superb book is Alev Lytle Croutier's debut novel.