Herma

Here is a delight: MacDonald Harris’s colourful, fanciful, and moving Herma, the story of a willful young woman who conquers the musical world of the Belle Epoque.

Herma is many things: a glamorous story of a singer who rises from the choir of a country church to stardom at the Paris Opera: the parallel adventures of her agent and friendly enemy Fred Hite, filled with the excitement of the early days of aviation; and a provocative sexual intrigue whose twinned her and heroine, not brother a...