Across the Seine

In December of '67, David Corrin, an Irish-American college business student in Manhattan, walks out of his 'Dante' exam and a month later walks into the Midi Hotel in the Latin Quarter of Paris. Issues of sex, religion, politics, race, identity, art, war and economics follow him as he encounters other young people at this tiny hotel across the street from the Sorbonne University where, he learns, the fourteenth century Italian poet, Dante Alighieri, once lived and studied. While...
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In December of '67, David Corrin, an Irish-American college business student in Manhattan, walks out of his 'Dante' exam and a month later walks into the Midi Hotel in the Latin Quarter of Paris. Issues of sex, religion, politics, race, identity, art, war and economics follow him as he encounters other young people at this tiny hotel across the street from the Sorbonne University where, he learns, the fourteenth century Italian poet, Dante Alighieri, once lived and studied. While haunted by the spectra of the Italian poet, David meets artists, writers, musicians and other expatriates and soon becomes romantically involved with a French-Canadian student actress, Aline Validot, who holds strong socialistic sympathies. He also befriends an African-American ex-GI, Bethel Green, who is tracking down a lost Renaissance painting believed to be a stolen Nazi art object once in the possession of a notorious underworld art dealer, Madam Nemonine. Events continue to turn David's world inside out as the leftwing Sorbonne students revolt against the authoritarian rule of President Charles De Gaulle and after a month of violent street protests in the Latin Quarter close down the entire country and nearly bring down the French government. Caught in the middle of these events, David struggles to hold onto to a future for himself with Aline.
Gene Arnone is both historian and storyteller in this fictional novel based on his personal experiences leading up to the events of Paris, May 68.
Across the Seine is meant as a compliment to Gene's first novel, A Stop at Matala, both set during the pivotal year of 1968.