I’ve been obsessed with the Chanel aesthetic for as long as I can remember. A few years ago, I set out to learn to make replica Chanel-style jackets and became addicted to the process.
It’s long and sometimes arduous, but so worth it in the end. I’d love to make another one, but really…who needs that many jackets? So, instead of making another one, I wrote a book. And it’s launching today.
Here’s what the story is all about…
Recent widow Charlotte “Charlie” Hudson embarks on a journey of discovery only to find there may be no line between reality and imagination—and no such thing as time.
It’s been over a year since her father died, and thirteen-year-old Frankie is tired of her mother, Charlie wallowing in her widowhood. Enlisting the help of her aunt, Charlie’s older sister, Evelyn, Frankie stages an intervention designed to propel Charlie off the couch and back into life. Charlie acquiesces to them, embarking on a solo trip to Mallorca in Spain to take a course on making replica Chanel jackets from a Parisian couturier who has made it her life’s work to imitate Coco Chanel.
When Charlie meets her classmates, she realizes they are all on this island for reasons far beyond learning to make a little French jacket. She is soon drawn into a classmate’s wild theory that their teacher is not quite what she appears to be, and Charlie begins to see that reality might not be at all what she thought it was.
On her trip home, Charlie stops in Paris for a few days, where she briefly encounters a mysterious French man in a bookstore. After buying the book he suggests before disappearing, Charlie realizes she has met him somewhere before. When they unexpectedly bump into one another again in Toronto, they are propelled into a journey to figure out where and when that was. With the help of a retired history professor, they find their quest taking them back in time to 1920s Paris and the life of a French painter and an American heiress. Together they discover there may be no line between reality and imagination—and no such thing as time.
And saying goodbye really is the only way to begin.
Blog readers who have been following along with me for a while know my passion are sewing and writing, and this book I the sixth in a series—the almost-but-not-quite-true stories—which began with The Year I Made 12 Dresses.
I’m seriously considering making another jacket. If I did one, would anyone want to follow along? In the meantime, maybe you’d like to read about a character who does it!
[The book is available from your favourite online book retailer.]
The G. G. Files 
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