The Sun Sets Twice: Book One

By Douglas Charles Peake

On a cold October morning in 1919 the battered body of Suzanne de Lamothe, the most notorious madam of Belle ?poque Paris, was found wedged under a tree limb along the banks of the Seine. Her death was ruled accidental. But Jennie Latmore, Suzanne's long time friend, knew it was murder. Terrified at the prospects of revealing that knowledge, Jennie locked the dark secret deep within her soul. Fifty years later, on Christmas Eve, a young Frenchwoman claiming to be Suzanne's granddaughter arrives at Jennie's door, accuses Jennie of murder and demands to know the truth. Jennie's past has at last caught up with her. No longer able to hold back the secret that has tormented her for all those years, Jennie tells the young woman the story of her loving and turbulent friendship with the beautiful, ambitious, fiercely independent but deeply troubled Suzanne de Lamothe; of Suzanne's rise from poverty and obscurity to wealth and fame; of the powerful men who loved her and the one man she loved but could never have; of the woman who became the symbol of eroticism in an age that kept such things quiet and behind closed doors. Book One of The Sun Sets Twice Series. THE SUN SETS TWICE SERIES Born into poverty and a life of subservient drudgery, beautiful young Suzanne de Lamothe defies the moral standards of Belle ?poque Paris to become the most celebrated and scandalous woman of her time. Determined and headstrong, desiring above all else love and family yet keeping them at arm's length to obtain wealth and fame, Suzanne uses her beauty to rise from obscurity to international notoriety. She becomes the envy of women and the object of desire by Europe's most powerful men, and, ultimately, by royalty. Fame and wealth are hers, though it pales when compared to her dream of having a child with the one man she loves. The physical confines and opportunistic restrictions of life on a small American island, where a woman's worth is measured solely on her skills at home and hearth, prove unbearable for artistic young Jennie Latmore. She leaves for Paris determined to succeed as a painter in a time when women stayed home and obeyed. Idealistic and strong-willed, modern in thinking yet fortified by the restraining moral prejudices of her lower class upbringing, Jennie does whatever is necessary to achieve fame and fortune in a medium controlled by men. Her stunning success is equaled only by the terrible price she, and the man she loves, must pay.Through two tumultuous decades the lives of these polar-opposite, independent young women intertwine in friendship and antagonism, passion and heartache, birth and murder in a turbulent era shedding its constrained Victorian past for the freedoms of an explosive new age. The Sun Sets Twice is an epic saga of romance and adventure set against the City of Lights and exotic locations around the world at a time of social change and artistic upheaval. Suzanne and Jennie's story takes place in an era that saw the arrival of moving pictures, the emergence of a dusty cowboy town in the American Southwest as a destination for artists from around the world, rebellions against imperialism in the far East and the sands of the Sahara, the ascent of Socialism, the disastrous voyage of a ship called unsinkable, and the horrors of aerial warfare overlooking the mud trenches of World War One.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1980593965
• ISBN13: 9781980593966
• Release Date: March 2018
• Publisher: Independently published
• Length: 468 Pages
• Weight: 1.73 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 1.2" x 6.0"