In this romantic debut novel, a reserved provincial French tailor falls head over heels in love with a woman who's hired him to create her wedding dress Claude Reynaud is a bit of a throwback, an old-fashioned dressmaker working in a cluttered studio outside modern-day Paris, quietly designing his famous gowns by hand. Every spring he ushers pretty young society brides into his studio, measures them, and designs their dresses without ever contemplating for himself the sort of romance that will lead these ladies and their grooms to the altar. But one afternoon a woman arrives who shatters his composure: Valentine de Verlay is charming, beautiful, a lady of society, and, of course, engaged. She comes with no instructions for her wedding dress, just a beautiful figure, a long graceful neck, and total faith in her dressmaker. Claude, forty-six years old, devoted to his work, and long since deserted by his wife, finds himself smitten. As Valentine's wedding approaches, his commitment to her dress makes it impossible for Claude to keep a safe distance, and everything he's come to rely on in his small, focused life looks ready to collapse. Worse still, as he is welcomed into her circle of friends and family, it appears that the betrothed Valentine may share his feelings. The Dressmaker is a perfect gem of a novel, an enchanting portrait of another world, and, above all, a sly and irresistible love story. Oberbeck, a writer for Cosmopolitan and Glamour , injects an unexpected twist into the French fashion scene in her debut novel. She has built her romantic tale around a far-from-glamorous dressmaker, Claude Reynaud, who eschews the Parisian fashion runways, opting instead to design his wedding dresses and hand-sewn gowns in the small town outside Paris where he learned his trade from his father and grandfather. Claude, divorced, has no children, but dotes on his nephews, and has convinced himself he is happy living with only his loquacious parrot. But then his mundane existence is upended by Valentine de Verlay, a bride-to-be who comes to Claude to design her wedding dress and rekindles feelings he thought had died forever. Oberbeck chronicles their doomed romance on its dizzying journey to Paris and New York, during which Claude is amazed that a beauty like Valentine would find him at all appealing. Oberbeck's romp is as light and frothy as one of Claude's chiffon creations, yet it is also an engaging dissection of high fashion and those who determine its whimsical direction. Deborah Donovan Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved "One creates a relationship as carefully as one creates a wedding dress. The Dressmaker doesn't drop a stitch."--Rita Mae Brown "What a pleasure to watch Elizabeth Oberbeck conjure up the world of French haute couture with effortless and playful ease and with the same ease spin her giddy plot. But what makes The Dressmaker so utterly irresistible is her hero, the ardent and pure hearted Claude. From first to last The Dressmaker is a delight."--Margot Livesey, author of Banishing Verona "We've read so much serious and interesting writing about food in fiction, and so little about the esthetic pleasures of couture, that Elizabeth Oberbeck's novel shimmers with invention. Her imagination is amazingly tactile, visual and sensuous, a rare pleasure, her storytelling is moving and sure, and her characters as real as a morning espresso . The Dressmaker is a wonderful debut."--Beth Gutcheon Elizabeth Birkelund Oberbeck has worked in book and magazine publishing, contributed a regular column to Cosmopolitan , and written for Travel and Leisure , Glamour , and Working Woman , among other publications. She lives in Greenwich, Connecticut, with her husband and four sons. The Dressmaker is her first novel. Chapter One Blossoms fluttered everywhere that morning outside the dressmaker's studio. They cascaded from above, settling at the base of the century-old apple tree like a pool of white satin at the hem of a wedding gown. Wedding gowns. Claude Reynaud had designed and sewn hundreds of them, but still, he thought, as he stitched on a lacy trim, they made him uneasy: the symbolism of the white dress, the secrecy of the veil, the surprise of the bride's sudden appearance before the slow, irrevocable procession down the aisle. . . . A fresh breeze from the wide-open window interrupted his thoughts. Drawing in the scent of apple blossoms, Claude studied the gnarly trunked tree that his great-grandfather had planted a century ago. The sap ran through this tree's branches as surely as blood pulsed through his own body and those of the generations of gentle Reynauds before him, traditional dressmakers all. But times were changing, as was Claude's clientele. Thanks to a favorable article in a widely read French national newspaper and several devoted clients, Monsieur Reynaud's talent had begun to attract sophisticated Parisiennes willing to