The Good Mother of Marseille

It is Marseille's summer of 2013, and an ensemble of Americans wander and sightsee this seductive city in the year of its designation as the European Capital of Culture. 

The Good Mother of Marseille opens with Noémie, the American (Quebecoise) who experiences the most transformation. Hers is the unifying presence among the four narrative threads of this novel as she struggles to come to terms with Marseille as 'home' for her. 

In moments of many worlds meeting, Noemie becomes a confidant of Corey from New Jersey, a doctoral student from another university. In the old port, the wife of a small-town Alabama couple presses to see all the sights while her husband is losing his vision to an eye disease. A Colorado man with late-stage cancer and fear of the unexpected falls in love with a French woman he meets at a port café. In Marseille and then in Paris, a woman helps her journalist husband figure out what is happening in his head as he experiences a peculiar stress disorder. Hovering on the fringe are the Marseillais, the shopkeepers, artists, café waiters. To the rhythm of European street life, each American puts a Marseille experience in the context of their own histories. 

“Marseille with its hot dangerous streets, its bars, and beautiful churches becomes a character in this fresh and original novel. Here we glimpse anew intriguing and moving facets of human nature so skillfully and believably portrayed.” —Sheila Kohler, author of 13 books, most recently a memoir, Once We Were Sisters 

“The Good Mother of Marseille is a remarkable work of imagination, a debut novel that not only introduces us to a gifted writer of fiction, but offers a beguiling glimpse into the zeitgeist of a generation’s appetite for the exotic and the mysterious. In the Hemingway tradition, its many linked stories gel into one compelling story of Americans abroad. Shade’s sensitivity toward his characters is infectious, and, quite frankly, unforgettable.” —Philip Schultz, Pulitzer Prize-winning author most recently of Luxury and The Wherewithal: A Novel in Verse 

“Shade has written a veritable bouillabaisse of a novel, simmering with intrigue and steaming with surprises.” —Lorea Canales, author of Becoming Marta and Los Perros