Alysa Salzberg's blog

    Imagine air so cold it takes the feeling from your fingertips. This is the kind of weather that always comes to mind when I think of Paris’s history museum, le mus é e Carnavalet . When I was a student here in Paris, a friend and I often used to stroll around the beautiful Marais neighborhood. When we got cold in winter, the musée Carnavalet was a warm refuge for us.  The seemingly endless permanent collection rooms were heated and free, and full of amazing, often very strange objects. Housed in two old h ô tels particuliers  (mansions built in the 16 th  to 18 th   centuries that are a signature of Marais architecture), the museum possesses an eclectic collection of items tied to Paris’s history. Some are fairly expected: paintings, maps, charts, city seals and street signs, for instance. Others, though, veer towards the odd. There’s Voltaire’s surprisingly tacky chair, a slipper that probably belonged to Marie-Antoinette, a model of the Bastille ...

Which one of these two delicious treats was almost impossible to find during the Siege of Paris? Here in France, the 1870-1871 Siege of Paris by the Prussians is largely forgotten - except for one thing: On a mang é  du rat - “ We ate rat.”   The Siege is notorious for the culinary boundaries it led starving Parisians to cross.  But when you look into it a little deeper, you realize that it wasn’t just rat for lunch and some animal from the zoo for dinner.   Learning about what most Parisians ate during the four months of the Siege was a fascinating and unexpectedly touching experience for me. Instead of being an initiation to all the different kinds of meat you can eat, it taught me how surprisingly little has changed in 150 years when it comes to putting together some dinner when the best food is scarce.   Actually, the best food wasn’t scarce, at least in my opinion. I often think about how I would have lived before chocolate was brought to Europe from the Ne...

This morning, two unusual things happened:  1. My son woke up for school on his own, meaning I didn't have to play the bad guy (I hate waking people up -sleep is a good thing!). 2. I received a message from Amazon that informed me that the ebook version of Hearts at Dawn is now live!   UPDATE: THE PAPERBACK VERSION IS NOW AVAILABLE, TOO! So, bascially, a great way to start the morning, especially for a non-morning person like myself. I went to bed the way I had been all my life and woke up...well, pretty much the same, only now there is a page on Amazon with my book on it. And it feels amazing. AHHH!!!!!  🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉 And terrifying. My book is out in the world now, and I wonder what people will think of it?  If you read it, I hope with all my heart that it gives you some escape from your worries and maybe even adds a glow of magic to your days, dear potential reader. Here's the link to the Amazon page .  If, like me, you're outside the US, you can find it ...

  I’m so excited to announce that my novel Hearts at Dawn will be published in Spring 2021! Here's what it's about:  History and magic intertwine in a fairytale retelling that will capture the hearts of Beauty and the Beast fans.   Hope helps you endure. Love will break the spell.   Paris, 1870. As the Franco-Prussian War enters its desperate final months, the capital transforms from a splendid metropolis into a city under siege. Lavish meals change to rations, pigeons deliver letters, and two destinies will collide, challenged by a seemingly unbreakable curse.  ~ Every night, New York aristocrat Orin Rush transforms into a monster. After learning that a human heart is the only way to break the curse, he keeps himself carefully distant from anyone he might hurt.    Can he lift the enchantment without taking a life?   His search for answers leads him to Paris. ~ Every day, free-spirited Claire Turin photographs the peop...