John Crawley Announces New Novel, Letters from Paris

Author John Crawley announces the publication of his 13th novel, Letters from Paris. Published in association with LULU Press, Crawley's latest work revolves around the life and writings of expatriate, Clare de Fontroy, the daughter of a slave who chronicles the evolution of society through the 20th century.

Clare de Fontroy is a poet, a journalist, a philosopher, a resistance fighter, a civil rights advocate, and, most importantly, a woman who never backs down from any hurdle life places in her path. She shares her observations of World War II and subsequent years with such luminaries as John Dos Passos, Dorothy Parker, and Ernest Hemingway. As her writings reveal, she becomes more and more radicalized about her views of Afro-Americans' treatment in the United States. Slowly, her drift to the left conflicts with her good friend, Dos Passos's, drift to the right. Their war of words is made painfully public in this story, as their friendship dissolves into spiteful one liners hurled against each other.

"Clare was a minor character in one of my earlier books," said Crawley in a recent interview. "She and her verse were cameos in much longer stories. Over the years I have let her drift in and out of several novels, then one day I thought it might be fun to create her backstory and write a novel about her life. I wanted her to tell the reader from an insider's view about the Great Depression, the Lost Generation, the Harlem Renaissance in Montmartre, and the war years.

"I wanted her to express her view of the civil rights movement, and, as a musician myself, to acknowledge the demise of Jazz after the war. She created quite a spring board for story telling opportunities."

Letters from Paris Synopsis:
Based solely on the fictional life of Ms. de Fontroy, the book covers the lives of many great members of the Lost Generation. It covers World War II from behind the enemy lines, and offers a refreshing look at the courage of an elderly Afro-American woman standing up against the McCarthy years of black balling, insidious innuendo and name-calling. Clare de Fontroy was tough as nails in her politics, and gentle as a feather on the wind with her prose and poetry.

Idealist, ideater, idol...she was all of these things and more. But deep inside, she was a woman who wanted to change the world - one person at a time. And if she had you in her crosshairs, you got a letter: a letter from Paris.

About John Crawley:
John Crawley is a Dallas, Texas-based writer. A graduate of the University of Texas at Austin, Crawley is the author of the award-winning novels, The Man on the Grassy Knoll, Stuff and Beyond a Shadow of a Doubt, The Myth Makers, Fishing Lessons, as well as his popular serial novel, Dream Chaser. Visit http://www.johncrawleybooks.com

Praise for John Crawley's Letters from Paris:
"I know...Clare de Fontroy is fiction...but it seemed as if her labored breathing fell in time with my own as I sat and read every word of her letters. John Crawley has done it again. He has strung together a narrative of history, a story of romance, a tale of a battle between right and wrong and placed it all on the shoulders of a frail black woman who was the daughter of a slave and the product of an America who saw her only as a wrinkled old negro - not the scholar or the artist she truly was. Her fight for civil rights belongs to us all. Every American who breathes this rarified air above our great land, should pick up her cause and march forward as she did."
- Karen Ryder
San Francisco, California

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