Camille 1944

by Claude Beccai

Overview

A non-stop talking seven-year-old French girl is discovering her world, occupied France in 1944. By most adults standards, she is too curious for her own good and sometimes the good of the adults that care for her. She will tell you which words that can be said aloud and which not. She has her own understandings of what is happening both in Paris where she was born and in the Village where she ended up being a refugee. When she is out of words, she makes them up.
This is presented in the form of vignettes (56) as if one browses an old photo album. A child has a different sense of chronology, a child follows feelings and there are lots of feelings. Love, admiration, anger, fears, friendship, joy, awe. Camille absorbs all, the good, the ugly, the dos and don't, wide-eyed.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940153122137
Publisher:	Claude Beccai
Publication date:	07/29/2016
Sold by:	Smashwords
Format:	eBook
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Claude Beccai was born in Paris, France only a few years prior to the onset of WWII. Her parents were living on the 6th floor ~formerly “maid quarters”~ of an apartment building in Paris...the city destined to soon become a pivotal location of the world wide struggle, centered in great part amidst the Western Europe theatre.
Her mother, Marcelle, was originally from the Normandy region of France. Her father, Antonio from Tuscany, had become a refugee in France after having fled the fascism devouring of Italy. These two otherwise loving people had an ongoing personal “war” regarding the virtues of butter versus olive oil; violence not being a part of their life...then came war.
Antonio was a dreamer, a reader, an idealist prone to catching colds in the malevolent Parisian weather.
Claude's mother, Marcelle, was an extremely energetic woman who had ‘much better’ things to do than knitting, reading or “house-wifing”.
A muchly redemptive feature of life in Paris was ~pre-war~ the food. Whenever possible, which was not too often, the loving family all talked amicably over raw oysters, sea urchins, or “moules marinières”...and of course, the beauty of a plethora of wonderfully delicious French desserts.
There was joy, there was love, and there was ‘bitter warring’ (mainly about the above-mentioned olive oil and butter).
Later in life, Claude Beccai became married ...to an Irish crackpot / dreamer / “poet”. Then, as before; there was joy, there was love, and there was ‘bitter warring’ (this time revolving primarily of the superior French know-how versus the Irish knack for rhymes).
Claude Beccai, having lived most of her adult life in Canada, at locations spanning shore to shore / coast to coast, now lives in Vancouver, British Columbia.