AFTER THE BARRICADES

Who was my mother?

This is a question that plagues Anna, a journalist living in New York City, after the sudden tragic death of her parents. Armed with a box of letters and a strange painting, Anna travels to Paris to learn more about the life that her mother, Bethany, lived in the city of lights in the late 1960s.

There she meets Stefan, her mother's former lover whom she never knew existed. Bethany's one year in Paris included May 1968, a turbulent time when student protests and labor strikes threatened to upend the very fabric of French society. Bethany, a blue-blood Bostonian, found herself in the thick of riots and rationing as she and her friends attempted to find their place in the world.

At the heart of it all is the story of Bethany and her lover, Stefan, a quiet, unassuming man with a harrowing past and many dark secrets of his own.