Gilbert Parker 58 min read

Into a sleepy French-Canadian village comes the magnetic Valmond, scattering coins and hints that he is a lost heir of Napoleon, and the town is swept up in his glittering dream of empire.

Gilbert Parker's 1895 novel (volume one) is an atmospheric historical fantasy-romance. Vivid, poignant, superbly told. Read it for a haunting tale of imposture, faith, and grandeur, a stranger who may or may not be a Bonaparte kindling wild hopes in a quiet village, in a beautifully written romance about the strange power of a great dream over ordinary hearts.

In its time

Published in 1895, during the 1890s, wells arrives.

Reading it

58 min read (a novelette, room for a turn or two).