Before You Begin

Before you begin.

In the summer of 1584, the quiet château of La Vallée seems safely removed from the ambitions of the world. Emily St. Aubert has been educated to notice both the grandeur of nature and the movements of her own mind. When loss carries her beyond the landscapes she knows, that discipline becomes a form of resistance.

Ann Radcliffe published The Mysteries of Udolpho in 1794 and transformed the Gothic novel. Her landscapes, music, documents, and half-seen signs test perception: terror begins in the space between what the senses report, what fear imagines, and what authority asks others to believe.

Volume I establishes La Vallée, the journey through Gascony and the Pyrenees, Emily's bond with her father, her meeting with Valancourt, and the obligations beginning to close around her. The fortress named in the title still lies ahead. This illustrated companion follows the five people, southern-French roads, objects, memories, and farewells that give its future shadows meaning.