What would you do if you found out your grandfather had an affair with the most iconic, glamorous woman in the world—and never breathed a word about it? And that woman was Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.

I’ll tell you what you’d do: you’d want to know what happened. Just like I, Lucie Montgomery, did. To begin with, how did Pépé manage to keep this bombshell a secret for seventy years? That’s right: seventy years. He and Jackie met during her junior year abroad in Paris in 1949; she dropped her map of the Louvre while visiting that museum and my chivalrous grandfather picked it up for her.

I could just imagine what happened afterwards in the most romantic city in the world between my handsome grandfather who was oh, so French, and Jackie, who adored Paris, its culture, its history, its fashion, its . . . everything. Plus we all know what a huge Francophile Jackie became after that year, how as First Lady she charmed the pants off the French Minister of Cultural Affairs, persuading him to allow the Mona Lisa—France’s national treasure—to come to America, giving Charles de Gaulle a migraine that lasted the entire time the painting was not on French soil.

So how, you wonder, could I possibly bring up the subject of my grandfather’s romance with Jackie after so much time? As luck would have it, the perfect opportunity was about to present itself to do just that.

Cricket Delacroix, one of Jackie’s classmates from Paris who lived near my Virginia vineyard, was celebrating her 90th birthday—and Pépé was flying over from France for the party. The night before Cricket’s bash, there would be another party at a local art gallery where portraits of Marie Antoinette that Jackie had purchased for a song that magical year in Paris—and now were worth a fortune—would be on display before Cricket donated them to a D.C. museum.

What better time to broach the subject of my grandfather’s liaison with Jackie than at an event honoring her? Perfect, right?

Until, that is, Cricket’s daughter Harriet announced that she’d found Jackie’s Paris diary in a box Jackie had bequeathed Cricket containing notes for an unfinished book on Marie Antoinette and her female portraitist. The diary, Harry crowed, was pure gold. So, of course, Harry, who planned to finish what she said was Jackie’s otherwise dull, scholarly biography, was going to include some of the spicier entries concerning a romance Jackie had never revealed.

What Harry didn’t bargain for was that Jackie’s friends, who knew her when she used to hunt and ride in Middleburg, also knew how much Jackie cherished her privacy, meaning Harry’s kiss-and-tell book didn’t go over well with them. Among Jackie’s defenders was Parker Lord, an old friend and internationally known landscape designer whose new book on climate change, The Angry Earth, was so controversial he was getting death threats.

So when Parker turned up dead in my vineyard while inspecting some ailing vines, the first thing I thought was that maybe someone finally made good on those threats. Then I learned he’d also alienated the popular, well-liked owner of a local nursery, nearly destroying the man’s career. With no shortage of potential murder suspects, there was one other possibility: Parker’s death had something to do with Jackie and that diary.

And, if it did, was my beloved grandfather somehow involved?

The French Paradox, A Wine Country Mystery #11
Genre: Traditional
Release: April 2021
Purchase Link

Lucie Montgomery’s discovery of her grandfather’s Parisian romance unlocks a series of shocking secrets in the gripping new Wine Country mystery.

In 1949, during her junior year abroad in Paris, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis bought several inexpensive paintings of Marie-Antoinette by a little-known 18th century female artist. She also had a romantic relationship with Virginia vineyard owner Lucie Montgomery’s French grandfather – until recently, a well-kept secret.

Seventy years later, Cricket Delacroix, Lucie’s neighbor and Jackie’s schoolfriend, is donating the now priceless paintings to a Washington, DC museum. And Lucie’s grandfather is flying to Virginia for Cricket’s 90th birthday party, hosted by her daughter Harriet. A washed-up journalist, Harriet is rewriting a manuscript Jackie left behind about Marie-Antoinette and her portraitist. She’s also adding tell-all details about Jackie, sure to make the book a bestseller.

Then on the eve of the party a world-famous landscape designer who also knew Jackie is found dead in Lucie’s vineyard. Did someone make good on the death threats he’d received because of his controversial book on climate change? Or was his murder tied to Jackie, the paintings, and Lucie’s beloved grandfather?

About the Author
Ellen Crosby is the author of the Virginia wine country mysteries, two mysteries featuring international photojournalist Sophie Medina and Moscow Nights, a standalone. The French Paradox is the 11th book in the wine country series. Before writing fiction, Crosby–who has lived in England, France, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, and the former Soviet Union–worked as a freelance reporter for The Washington Post, an economist at the US Senate, and Moscow reporter for ABC Radio News.

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