A heartrending, gripping novel about two sisters in Belle Epoque Paris and the young woman forever immortalized as muse for Edgar Degas Little Dancer Aged Fourteen.
1878 Paris. Following their father s sudden death, the van Goethem sisters find their lives upended. Without his wages, and with the small amount their laundress mother earns disappearing into the absinthe bottle, eviction from their lodgings seems imminent. With few options for work, Marie is dispatched to the Paris Opera, where for a scant seventeen francs a week, she will be trained to enter the famous ballet....