My story is altogether fictional, and should not be seen as a historical representation of specific events. It will be obvious that I have borrowed from this, but for the sake of my plot I have taken a number of liberties with the details.
The idea for this book came to me from a French history text, in which I found a passing reference to the stringent reform of an abbey in Port-Royal by a newly-appointed Mother Superior of only eleven years of age. You still won’t find Le Devin on any map, but if you go to the westernmost point of the island of Noirmoutier (it’s called La Pointe du Devin) and look out to sea, who knows? You may get lucky… Background I also see it as a kind of prelude to Coastliners, in that it is set in much the same part of the world, and provides some information on the origins of Sainte Marie-de-la-mer (you will notice that she changed to Sainte-Marine a couple of centuries later, when she reappeared on Le Devin).Īs for the setting of Holy Fools, you will find the island of Noirmoutier on most maps, though it was called Noirs Moustiers (the Monastery of the Black Friars) in 1610, and its shape has altered somewhat since then. She might easily be an ancestor of Vianne (LeMerle, too, fits in with Reynaud’s ancestry), as she too is a traveller, a witch of sorts, and has a number of unorthodox ideas on spirituality. Firstly, my central character, Juliette, has many things in common with Vianne Rocher (most especially in terms of her relationship with her mother and her young daughter). It precedes (and complements) Chocolat in a number of ways. I finished an early version of it before I wrote Chocolat, and came back to it five years later, having realized that I still liked the characters and the story, and that I wanted to see it completed. This story has been in my mind, in one form or another, for quite some time.
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