Why a Booktrail?
WW2: Travel to Paris and Grasse with Jan Moran for the most fragrant journey of them all.
Scent of Triumph
What you need to know before your trail
French perfumer Danielle Bretancourt steps aboard a luxury ocean liner, leaving her son behind in Poland with his grandmother, she has no idea that her life is about to change forever.
Danielle Bretancourt is a trained perfumer,happily married to Max and expecting her second child. They step on board a luxury liner having left their son at home with Grandmother Sofia in Poland. However, the year is 1939 and war is about to break out. Sofia and the boy are of Jewish heritage so this puts them in grave danger.
WW2: Travel to Paris and Grasse with Jan Moran for the most fragrant journey of them all. The story follows Danielle as she searches desperately for her son, taking her via London, through Paris, Grasse and over to the West Coast of America.It’s here, in 1940s Los Angeles where she vows to begin life anew and to work as a perfumer and fashion designer to the Hollywood elite.
Travel Guide
Grasse
Grasse is the place in France for perfumes and the creation of them
“In Philippe’s battered farm truck, they wound through Grasse on narrow cobblestones streets lined with lace curtained shops. The aroma of garlic and saffron wafted through the air from a corner cafe”
This is a story where words and descriptions waft from the page as if each page were crafted as a perfume. Danielle’s daughter is even named Jasmine so the scent of flowers is imbued in her every waking moment. The art of perfumery is exactly that – an art and this is the place to linger to appreciate that art in full.
Paris
Paris is a city at war and Danielle is horrified to see and learn of the changes, The Ritz has been requisitioned and was now under Nazi control as were other hotels such as the Crillion on Place de la Concorde. It’s only the Ritz however which allows civilians to stay. They try to get Max’s mother Sofia to Danielle’s parents’ apartment in the sixteenth arrondissement. Danielle stand on the bridge over the Sine and looks wistfully at the city she loves changing so drastically. The celebrated Art de Triomphe is where French tanks have passed by after Charles de Gaulle has organised a resistance to get the Germans out
Other locations
There is a journey via London with mentions of the situation in Poland and Europe, but it’s the final destination of Los Angeles and the rich enclave of Beverley Hills This is a new chapter in her perfume life and it’s a tour around the glitzy hotels and stores Describing something, Danielle notes that it ‘ smells like California in summer”
Streetview Maps
A) Grasse - the train station
D) Paris - Place Vendome and the Ritz hotel
Where Next?
