Here are the first two chapters of Back There, a novel which recounts a mid-century love between a French girl and an art-crazy American, Harry Grossman, aka Seymour Stein, hapless posthumous hero of Good Americans Go to Paris when they Die decades later.


The Lauriers' tumbledown country place is thirty miles and a century from Paris. Harry, the New York outsider, calls it paradise and photographs it all: the Model T Ford on the roof, the marvelously archaic well and scythe, the top-secret wild mushroom spots. And, of course, his French sweetheart and the members of her family. The Lauriers assume that Harry will soon be a member himself, the outsider finally insider. But Harry, allergic to commitment of any sort other than artistic, is convinced that marriage is the death of love. Aren't things already perfect in this paradise? He goes on photographing it. Someone once said, though, that all paradises are lost paradises. Harry will finally understand that love, not art, is the major commitment. It's up to the reader to decide whether Harry learns this truth in time.


Back There is available at Amazon (at least for the time being), and also at Barnes and Noble in the US and WH Smith in the UK.