Beyond a Thousand Words: A Novel

As 1954 Vietnam roils from its conflict with the French interlopers, American photographer Coty Fine leaves Hanoi in a rush on the flatbed of a truck. Also on the truck is a French priest, Laurent Sabatier—a man who will forever change the course of Coty’s life. Six decades later, Coty struggles to repair the frayed bond between Jette, her often-absent, widowed daughter, and Evelyn, her only grandchild. Evelyn, at the behest of her grandmother, travels to Vietnam to locate a nun, Sister Lan, whom Coty has never met yet has been haunted by for many years. Evelyn persuades Sister Lan to return with her to San Francisco to meet Coty, even as Coty invites Matheo Aubert, a visiting priest from Gabon, to move into her home as a guest during his reluctant sabbatical. The two clerics are central—albeit unwitting—players in Coty’s scheme to heal the rift in her family, and her own wounds from the past. But if she is going to succeed in her quest, she must secure Jette’s long-withheld permission to share a revelatory photograph—one that promises to change everything—with Evelyn. And Coty’s daughter, like she, is one stubborn woman.