We Are Eternal

Pierrette Fleutiaux's prize-winning novel is an unforgettable record of human love, a mesmerizing tale of illicit passion and of a pair of doomed lovers tried by fate and destroyed by a web of lies intended to protect them. At the heart of the Helleur family is a dark secret, borne by each adult but scrupulously concealed from the children, Dan and Estelle: no one speaks of the mystery surrounding Nicole, the childlike, ethereal mother, a beautiful dancer tormented by bouts of madness; of Mr. Helleur's quiet sadness and potent fear that the precarious, deceptive foundation upon which his family rests will one day be shattered; or of Tiresia, the strange, golden-fingered pianist who never speaks and hides her face behind a veil of black but is the soul of the household, the protector of its hidden truth, and the only hope for Dan and Estelle. Narrated by Estelle - now separated forever from her true love and forever bound to him by their shared, tragic destiny - We Are Eternal traces the Helleur family secret back to its source. For Estelle is finally in possession of the knowledge from which she has been so studiously shielded, knowledge that would have saved her, and, torn by loss and desire, she now undertakes this final act of storytelling with an anguished awareness of how the ultimate catastrophe that befell them all might so easily have been averted, if only ... Haunting and intensely lyrical, possessed of all the eerie, captivating power of the best modern gothics, Pierrette Fleutiaux's novel is an irresistible account of an amour fou, a once-in-a-lifetime passion that transcends time and taboo, a love raised to the level of myth.