The Knowledge of Water

Finished August 21

The Knowledge of Water by Sarah Smith

This historical novel has elements of suspense and romance, as well as an interesting historical setting. It is 1910 and in Paris. 

One of the main characters, Alexander von Reisden adopted his current life when he was very young. At the age of eight, he was an American boy who killed in self-defense and fled, changing his name and his country. For years he had buried his memories of the past, but eventually remembered and now feels the weight of his actions heavily. He worried that his crime is a personality and moral flaw that he cannot escape. But the three people who know of his past have absolved him, recognizing the circumstances of the action he took. He now runs Jouvet Medical Analyses, an institute that specialized in mental disturbances and has an impressive case archive going back decades.

Perdita Halley is the other main character. She is a young American woman studying music, specifically piano, persevering in spite of her instructor's misogyny and her own failing sight.  She is the protégée of American rare book expert Gilbert Knight, who funds her studies and worries about her enough that he sends his friend, investigator Roy Daugherty to Paris to check on her, determine whether an outright gift of money is a good idea and see if his hoped-for union of Perdita and Alexander is likely.

Perdita and Alexander are close, and they grow closer despite their misgivings. They are drawn to each other, but Perdita worries that marriage will mean giving up music, and Alexander worries that Perdita won't be happy. 

Meanwhile the rain in France is at record levels and flooding issues grow more dire. There is also a murdered woman, who identified with the Mona Lisa, and whose body sits in the morgue waiting for the investigation on her death to lead to her murderer, and the museum guard who may have killed her. There is Milly Xico, a French writer whose ex-husband still tries to control her and exploit her talents as he did during their marriage, even as she makes strategic choices of her own. There is a possible art fraud regarding paintings by an artist who died a few years earlier, and his widow, Madame Mallais, who may be part of the fraud. 

I enjoyed the undercurrent of feminism here, with Perdita, Milly, and Madame Mallais, as they each navigate a world where women have different rules and expectations. There is also the very real flooding that happened in Paris and the immense damage it did, with both infrastructure damage and lives lost.