GOODREADS have launched our GIVEAWAY contest: duration for one week,: September 9-16, and only FIVE FREE AUTHOR SIGNED COPIES, postage paid. Competition appears severe.

Go to: goodreads.cohttps://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/show/153831-enchanting-the-swan

After just one day,  more than 100 entries have already been made, all eager to read this moving novel about two grad students and passionate musicians, Paul, pianist, and Fiona, cellist, whose love life at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg falls apart after a brilliant and promising beginning. If you click in the photographs most computers will enlarge the picture.

They kiss for the first time on this famous Crim Dell Bridge at W & M, after successfully performing their program’s rehearsal before friends, teachers and a few faculty members in the Ewell Hall. The summit of the program is The Swan by Camille St. Saëns. This is a great moment for them. Then graduation comes and their love is shattered by Fiona’s godparents in her home  country, Belgium, who do not consider Paul a good enough match in their noble family. Paul visits her family in Brussels, but the father is hostile, the mother cool, distant, and reserved, though she points out where Fiona can be reached. Then he meets distressed Fiona, who has to abide by her family’s dictum: as her parents had willed it, she must marry into her own noble Belgian circle. It is all written down in her parents’ testament. A young nobleman she has known when studying at the Free University of Brussels will become her husband. She forces the break-up with Paul during lunch at the Grand Place, and Paul is devastated.

Restaurant-bar Roi d’Espagne, on the right where Fiona breaks-up in tears.

Only much later does Paul find out that Fiona’s godfather, a senior manager at the Brussels’ Société Générale, and her future husband, also a banker – had only one thing in mind: remain the masters of her sizable trust fund for their own gain.

Paul finishes an advanced investment seminar at Brussels University (ULB) but does not see Fiona anymore. To his chagrin, the decision is final and cannot be rescinded.

To get rid of his sour mind and keep his sanity, Paul plays piano at the Salle Delveau in the “Cité”. He is lucky that a guest speaker at his investment course is impressed with his mathematical skills and offers him a job at the Geneva branch of First Swiss Bank. So, deeply hurt Paul travels to Geneva with the TGV to start his career, completely the opposite of what he had hoped for with Fiona in New York.

Paul’s bank on the left

But Geneva proves Paul’s pitfall: the girls he meets are aloof or insensitive, except one who is married. Higher-ups in his bank are scheming to make clandestine money and the fat girl Diane he helps on the ski slopes turns out the daughter of the wealthy and influential businessman involved.  High up in the Jura Diane forces him to be the whistleblower of the scheme in the bank to save her father from downfall and bankruptcy. It nearly destroys his internship and he must return to the USA.

View of the Mont Blanc from the Dôle on the Swiss Jura near Geneva where Diane gives Paul her bombshell.

A hasty departure for New York follows after Paul completes his internship successfully and, despite all what happened, with distinction. He is transferred to First Swiss Bank in New York in a managerial position.

And then by sheer coincidence he meets the son of Fiona’s aunt at an office party, who tells him Fiona is in New York, shattered by an abusive relationship and divorcing! They meet at a house concert at Fiona’s aunt…can they put humpty-dumpty back together again or not? A long struggle that ends up with a loud shot!

BANG-BANG!!!

NOW YOU HAVE A CHANCE TO READ THIS STORY TOO!

PARTICIPATE IN THE GOODREADS GIVEAWAY FOR A FREE SIGNED COPY POSTAGE PAID…ONLY TILL SEPTEMBER 16!

goodreads.cohttps://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/show/153831-enchanting-the-swan

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OR IF BY CHANCE YOU ARE NOT LUCKY OR WANT IT RIGHT AWAY, BUY IT (PAPERBACK OR KINDLE) AND ENJOY A “GOOD READ”:

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JOHN