Paris Beckons

When Susanna Solomon turned fourteen, her father told her that he was going to Paris to be alone. She believed him. Instead, he went to be with his mistress, an event that changed the trajectory of her family’s life forever. When he returned, her mother confronted him, and he lied to her. Fed up and in despair, she took her own life.

Fifty years later and long after he was gone, Solomon felt an urge to see where her father had gone.

The result is Paris Beckons, her collection of vignettes told in the voice of our narrator, Nina, who sets out to follow in her father’s footsteps in Paris. When she returned to places where she had been with her parents, Nina finds her mother standing beside her while holding her hand on the quai, and her father criticizing her everywhere they went. Confronting them gave her a chance to heal, and she returned home transformed.

Evocative and personal, heart-wrenching and illuminating, these short stories reveal what lies beneath our deepest fears and memories and will appeal, especially, to adult children with pasts that refuse to remain buried.