The Would-Be Commoner: A Tale of Deception, Murder, and Justice in Seventeenth-Century France

By Jeffrey Ravel

In the tradition of The Return of Martin Guerre, a dramatic tale of false identity, murder, and bigamy that riveted France during the reign of Louis XIV From the historian Jeffrey Ravel comes a... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0618197311
• ISBN13: 9780618197316
• Release Date: July 2008
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 1.04 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.3" x 0.9" x 5.5"

Customer Reviews

A Tale Well-Told

Mystery lovers will be delighted; history lovers will be entranced; lovers of fine writing will be pleased and people who just want a good story will be satisfied. Ravel takes a puzzling event from the waning days of the 17th century and with a patient and careful eye examines not only the evidence but the implications of the evidence which prove to be more far-reaching than you might first suppose. Unlike historic fiction, where heroes and heroines hold the stage, here we meet ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances acting in very human but puzzlling ways. What seems an unlikely story becomes very human and believable, and suggests truth about ourselves as well. Ravel's masterful writing, his presentation of the "facts", his sympathetic eye for all the people he describes combine with his historian's commitment to fairness and impartiality to give us a glimpse of a foreign place and time so real we put the book down thinking "yes, I was there; that's exactly how it happened." Try this book, you'll be glad you did.