'THE VIRGIN BLUE' Romantic novel connects characters

The author displays a fondness for heroines trapped in a rigid culture.
By MARY-LIZ SHAW
MILWAUKEE JOURNAL SENTINEL
"The Virgin Blue," by Tracy Chevalier (Plume, $14).
Just in time for the recent 214th anniversary of Bastille Day comes Tracy Chevalier's summer novel about France. Chevalier is one of those literate romance writers in the same vein as Elizabeth Berg or Anita Shreve. There are no dashing literary gymnastics, but the stories and characters are appealing.
"Virgin Blue" is Chevalier's first novel, from 1997, but it was never published here. This summer's Plume paperback version is the book's American debut.
In 1999, Chevalier made a splash with "Girl With a Pearl Earring," a fictional speculation on the life of Dutch master Johannes Vermeer. A film version is scheduled to come out in the fall.
Its heroine, Griet, was an independent spirit trapped in a rigid culture.
Chevalier must be fond of such characters.
"The Virgin Blue" has Isabelle du Moulin, nicknamed "La Rousse," an intuitive and sensuous beauty trapped in a stiff Protestant community in 16th-century France. She harbors a secret admiration for the Virgin Mary, inspired by the trait she shares with her -- red hair.
A second heroine, Ella Turner, is an expatriate American and a descendant of Isabelle's living in a quaint French town about 400 years later.
Back and forth
Chevalier weaves their tales into a narrative that flips back and forth from Isabelle's unhappy isolation in her taciturn Protestant family to Ella's unhappy isolation among the taciturn modern French villagers.
Ella learns of her troubled ancestor while tracing her family, in an attempt to ease her loneliness in picturesque Lisle-sur-Tarn. She resents the villagers' acceptance of her gregarious American husband, with his Yankee accent, while she, who speaks fluent French, is shunned.
Ella's trips to the library bring her in contact with Jean-Paul, a librarian who is everything her husband is not. He smokes, drinks and plays jazz piano. Most of all, he is interested in Ella's pursuit and, ultimately, in Ella.
As Ella's tale follows a predictable path to infidelity and emotional fulfillment, Isabelle's takes a darker turn. Her story has more promise, but it gets bogged down in Chevalier's melodramatic prose, language she mercifully abandons in the modern sections. It ends with an implausible denouement that hardly explains the tantalizing mysteries dropped along the plot.
Chevalier has done her homework on the French Protestants, known as Huguenots, who took their inspiration from the teachings of John Calvin and Martin Luther.
She traces their persecution and flight to Switzerland through the strange Tournier family Isabelle marries into. The history is believable, but the Tourniers' peculiar spiritualism, which blends Calvinism with ancient pagan beliefs to horrifying effect, is not.
Spiritual connection
Chevalier uses metaphor to suggest the spiritual connection of her two women -- both suffer from psoriasis, both women's hair turns red mysteriously -- but these devices often seem forced and overwrought.
It's as though she's reaching for meaning and distinction in a story that is really just a fine, touching love affair. And this is the best way to read the book.
Forget the devices; just bask in the alluring Gallic atmosphere.