INTRODUCTION

Although the events of the Holocaust and WWII have been covered extensively, The Revelations of Madame X serves as a timely reminder of the extreme ideologies and subsequent actions that unfolded in person, place, and time. Interwoven throughout my lived experiences as an expatriate in France and the United Kingdom are the stories of the Delacroix and Bertrand families as retold to me by both Madame X herself and other family members. In chronicling many of their lives that intersected with parts of my own, I stayed true to every character’s personality profile and the circumstances surrounding their extraordinary losses, scandalous liaisons, and ultimate tragedies. Throughout the book, I refer to specific places, bynames of individuals, and the definitions of groups of people interchangeably. All dialogue communicated to me in French or English reflects translated conversations, recounts of my observations and interactions, or inferences in moments of the past. By respecting the importance of depicting each character and their intricacies most accurately, I elected to forgo any overt creative liberties, except for explicit dialogue, compressed events, and names.

In my attempt to join the complex storylines of past to present and for ease in transitioning between timelines, I elected a third-person narrative for most of the book. At the beginning of each section, I set the stage with historical summaries that briefly illustrate the global events related to the personal accounts that follow. Coming out from behind the curtain in the lead-up toward the end, I shift from a third-person narrator to sharing the remainder of the story with you in my own voice.

As a debut novelist blending both pure and creative nonfiction herein, I immersed myself in the depth and breadth of painful subject matters, exploring the varying and interrelated facets of cultural values and ethics amid a labyrinthine of geopolitical strife at extremes that could not be ignored. During our time in Europe, my husband Gabriel and I spent a great deal of time on the ground, researching, observing, and personally experiencing the terror, upheaval, and displacement now gripping our world. In detailing even-handedly what propelled us far beyond our comfort zones, I took great care not to take a political position nor suggest solutions but rather let you, the reader, draw your own conclusions. Likewise, by articulating what I deemed historically pivotal, spanning the outbreak of WWII in 1939 to the outset of the Israeli massacres on October 7, 2023, I combined facts and data that exist in the public domain — along with our vantage point as witnesses and documentarians, where relevant.

Lastly, with much further importance in my commitment to bring the right words to the wrongful transgressions of the past was my discovery of how history can best teach us, even when those lessons are learned much later in life, as was my case. In my look back at the history of France and her people, I believe there is so much we can learn from their failures and victories in the face of our worldwide challenges of today. Moreover, in reverence to receiving a treasured gift of first-hand familial accounts most worthy of being recorded, I made a promise to Gabriel to tell their stories, his story, and our story wherever and whenever I could, both in random conversations and in the form of a written documentary that will remain behind for the next inquiring mind who seeks further knowledge and understanding borne of extraordinary journeys, enlightened perspectives and the power of love.

Maggie Bertrand 2024