About the Book

The critically acclaimed, bestselling author of Falling Through the Earth and Angelology returns with this much-anticipated memoir of love and transformation in France. The Fortress is Peter Mayle meets Eat, Pray, Love, a gorgeously written account of one woman’s journey to the other side of the romantic fairytale.

"If I had been another woman, I might have been skeptical. But I wasn’t another woman. I was a woman ready to be swept away. I was a woman ready for her story to begin. As a writer, story was all that mattered. Rising action, dramatic complication, heroes and villains and dark plots. I believed I was the author of my life, that I controlled the narration."

From their first kiss, twenty-seven-year-old writer Danielle Trussoni is spellbound by a novelist from Bulgaria. The two share a love of jazz and books and travel, passions that intensify their whirlwind romance.

Eight years later, hopeful to renew their marriage, Danielle and her husband move to the south of France, to a picturesque medieval village in the Languedoc. It is here, in a haunted stone fortress built by the Knights Templar, that she comes to understand the dark, subterranean forces that have been following her all along.

While Danielle and her husband eventually part, Danielle's time in the fortress brings precious wisdom about life and love that she could not have learned otherwise. Ultimately, she finds the strength to overcome her illusions, and start again.

An incisive look at romantic love, The Fortress is one woman’s fight to understand the complexities of her own heart, told by one of the best writers of her generation.

Critical Praise

“A brave and wrenching memoir, Danielle Trussoni’s The Fortress will captivate the many readers who are already in love with her magical novels [...] I dare you to put this book down once you read the opening page. Make that a double dare.” — Julie Metz, author of Perfection

“The Fortress is a bold book about the most intimate things. Danielle Trussoni’s clear-eyed examination of how she loved and lost her husband is both a page-turner and a profound meditation on the nature of desire and freedom in the modern age.” — Cheryl Strayed, bestselling author of Wild.

“A memoir that reads like a fairy tale….entertaining.” — Kirkus Reviews

“[The Fortress] is a powerful story, and Trussoni has the fortitude and judgment to do it justice.” — Publishers Weekly

With vivid eloquence and wrenching honesty, The Fortress lays bare one of the great mysteries of modern life: the secret emotional world of a failing marriage. — Lev Grossman, bestselling author of The Magicians

Product Details

• ISBN: 9780062459015
• ISBN 10: 0062459015
• Imprint: Dey Street Books
• On Sale: 06/27/2017
• Trimsize: 5.310 in (w) x 8.000 in (h) x 0.760 in (d)
• Pages: 336
• List Price: $15.99
• BISAC1 : FAMILY & RELATIONSHIPS / Marriage & Long Term Relationships
• BISAC2 : FAMILY & RELATIONSHIPS / Dysfunctional Families
• BISAC3 : BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Personal Memoirs