The Virgin Blue

By Tracey Chevalier

I read this book mostly on planes (a perfect book for travelling!) and soon found myself engrossed in the story, which has everything from historical fiction and suspense to romance and the supernatural. It alternates between the stories of Ella and Isabelle. Though they are born centuries apart they are bound by a fateful family legacy.

Isabelle’s story takes place in 16th-century France during the development of the Protestant Reformation. As a child, Isabelle du Moulin is drawn to a church statue of the Virgin Mary, which sits in a niche painted a very special blue. When it is first installed the sun's rays light up the statue and Isabelle's hair, turning her hair a coppery colour. From then on she is called "La Rousse" and becomes tormented and shunned by her hardworking, God-fearing Huguenot community, which becomes suspicious of her lingering adoration for the Virgin Mary, her skills at midwifery, her mysterious association with wild wolves and her fiery red hair. When the statue eventually is destroyed, Isabelle becomes more of an outsider because of her mystical link to the Virgin. However, all her life she continues to dream of the virgin and that special blue colour.

When Isabelle becomes pregnant by Etienne du Moulin, she marries into the severe Tournier family, outwardly stoic followers of the Truth who covertly adhere to older, pagan superstitions. Like all Huguenots during the persecutions in the 1570's, the du Moulins are forced to flee to Switzerland. Trouble erupts within the family when the hair of Isabelle's daughter Marie starts to turn the same coppery red colour as her mother's.

Ella’s story takes place more than four centuries later. The American Ella Turner and her husband Rick move to a small town in France. She hopes to brush up on her French, qualify to practice as a midwife and start a family. However, she struggles to adapt and is not given a particularly warm welcome. She also keeps having nightmares of the colour blue. While in France her father suggests that she take the opportunity to visit her relatives in Switzerland and upon her father’s suggestion, Ella starts to investigate her French Huguenot ancestry, trace their flight into Switzerland and eventually unearth the sinister family secret that has been buried for four hundred years. But the search is not an easy one as Ella knows no more than her family's original surname, Tournier. She begins her research at a local library where she meets and befriends librarian Jean Paul. Then one afternoon, Ella discovers her brown hair inexplicably beginning to turn red…

Gradually the strange blue colour becomes a stronger presence in her life and inevitably draws her to her ancestor Isabelle Tournier.