Portrait of an Unseen Woman: A Novel of Annie Shaw
Widowed during the American Civil War when her gallant young husband, Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, led a heroic regiment of Black troops to their doom at Fort Wagner, Annie Shaw has spent much of the ensuing years living quietly in Paris’s insular American colony. That begins to change in 1892, when 56-year-old Annie, finally on her own after the death of her mother, decides that she wants more from Parisian life. Spurred on by a chance encounter with her husband’s worldly aunt, Annie makes her way into the artistic circles of Paris, and to a richer—and more complicated—existence.
Harold’s writing is lively, especially her dialogue (“The Sapphists don’t bite, as a rule,” a character advises Annie), and her portrait of Belle Époque Paris is vivid. While I found the romantic entanglements of Annie’s new friends rather exhausting, lovers of shows like The Gilded Age will likely differ. It’s also refreshing to see an older heroine in a genre that often relegates those past middle age to the sidelines.
According to Harold, little is known about Annie Shaw’s postwar life. This novel is a plausible and engaging imagining of what might have been.
