Gabrielle: a Novel

Czech born GABRIELLE, orphaned after her mother dies in a Nazi concentration camp, is brought up by nuns, and leaves for Paris at the age of eighteen to study languages at the Sorbonne University.

While in Paris, Gabrielle investigates her birthright and discovers that her name reveals Jewish heritage through her mother. Caught between her Jewish background and her Catholic upbringing, she decides to spend two years on a kibbutz in Israel to determine who she really is and where she fits in.

Before she can leave, however, Jack, a young Englishman, stumbles into her life. They share a baguette, cheese and a bottle of wine for dinner, change their immediate plans and experience the giddy days of first love. Then, reality bites, and they have to part, Jack back to England and a distraught Gabrielle to Israel.

In Israel, Gabrielle meets a young reservist paratrooper who also lives and works on the kibbutz. Originally from New Jersey, Mark is a man of few words, though this does not stop him from falling for Gabrielle. The feeling soon becomes mutual. However, before their relationship can move to plans of marriage and family, the Six-Day War breaks out, Mark returns to his unit and is lost to her.

Shaken emotionally at her second loss, Gabrielle returns to Paris to resume her studies as an interpreter. With her certificate, she accepts a part-time contract with the International Court of Justice in The Hague and moves there. Assigned to the French Embassy and acting as the interpreter for the French Second Secretary at a cocktail party, she meets Reza, a young Iranian diplomat who is a cousin of the Shah of Iran. Gabrielle and Reza quickly strike up a relationship that moves from the dinner table to brunch the next day and to the bedroom later. Both, however, withhold information about themselves that could prove damaging, if not career-ending, for Reza. The Iranians disapprove of Reza’s love interest and order him to cease and desist or marry Gabrielle. To add insult to injury, Iranian Embassy security trail the two and bug Gabrielle’s phone.

Despite her feelings, Gabrielle refuses to marry Reza under pressure from the Iranian Embassy. The relationship is further imperilled when they both come clean about their background: Gabrielle about being Jewish and having lived in Israel, and Reza about his position being a cover for his intelligence activities and a closet Baha’i and not the Muslim he seems to be to his employers and the outside world.

Gabrielle receives a wedding invitation from her old girlfriend at the kibbutz, Natalie—a transplanted New Yorker. Conflict seems to follow Gabrielle wherever she happens to be. She arrives in Israel just in time to be shelled and bombed in the Yom Kippur War and is evacuated to Tel Aviv with Natalie.

When Gabrielle finally returns to The Hague, she is unable to contact Reza. Did the Iranian Embassy find out about his background? Did they discover Gabrielle’s connection with Israel? Realizing how precarious her situation is, and the danger she might be facing, Gabrielle flees The Hague and returns to Paris to escape the clutches of the Iranians.

Fifty years later, at a wedding reception, Gabrielle is certain that one of the men sitting at her table is one of her former lovers. Having loved and lost three times, Gabrielle is philosophical, though, and wonders if an old flame can be reignited. Can it? Read the book and discover the ending.

GABRIELLE could be classified as a genre Romance – it ticks off most of the boxes – or a love story. The author leaves it to the reader to decide which or whether a definition really matters, and whether Gabrielle can at last true happiness with one of her three loves.