NaNo Book 2011

October 1 NaNo Prep

Saturday, Oct. 01
The general premise of your novel. Summarize the following: Who is your protagonist (or protagonists)? What will happen to him/her/it/them? Why? How will it turn out? What does that tell us? Is there a moral to the story? Resources to help you: Developing a Premise  and "Premise"  .






During the scope of the story, we follow the individual lives of Samantha, Christoph, Lottie and several others as their lives intersect, or nearly so and yet their actions reach out to touch these other lives unknowingly. 

Samantha and Chris meet in Paris and leave France in love and with plans to be together.  But life intervenes and they are lost to each other for the next forty years.  However, Samantha, a writer, leaves Paris with more . . .and less than she had when she arrived. 

Entangled with the tales of the various characters is a beat-up old denim jacket that has special meaning for Sam, and which is inadvertently left behind in Paris.  During the ensuing years, the jacket has several owners, each of whom is touched in some way by it, affected by it, or changed in some way because of it. It leads to the lovers separation and eventually, brings them together again. Along the way, it, and our characters individually find themselves returning to Paris, exploring Italy, thriving in Boston.

In a short time Christoph loses his beloved grandmother, and in turn, the family antique business and then is called for the draft and goes off to serve in Viet Nam where he is injured, losing his memory.  Samantha, now estranged from her family due to her being in the family way, eventually marries  a man whom she thinks can replace Chris in her heart. Being unable to have another child, and becoming a most successful writer prove to be too much and her husband walks out of her door one morning and out of her life that afternoon.

Her daughter, Kristen, dies young, leaving behind a daughter, Christina who is raised by her grandmother.  Tina, now an art curator with a Boston museum, sees the catalog for an auction in London.  So does Christoph, now the owner of a major antique house in Atlanta. One of the items being auctioned off is a beat-up denim jacket belonging to a best-selling author who uses a picture of her with the jacket taken forty years earlier  on the dust jacket of her books. The two each travel to London determined to win the jacket.  Christoph in the hopes it will lead him to his Samantha.  Tina in hopes of returning the jacket as a surprise to her grandmother who has told her stories of it her entire life.