Dancing to the Precipice: The Life of Lucie de la Tour du Pin, Eyewitness to an Era

“[A] remarkable biography….Moorehead deftly wields periods detail…to tell the story of a captivating woman who kept her sense of self amid the vicissitudes of politics.”

From acclaimed biographer Caroline Moorhead comes Dancing to the Precipice, a sweeping chronicle of the remarkable life of Lucie de la Tour du Pin—“an astute, thoroughly engaging biography of a formidable woman” (Boston Globe) who, over the span of some 80 years, was witness to, and often a participant in the major social upheavals of eighteenth-century French history.

This definitive French Revolution biography brings a turbulent era to life through the eyes of one of its most resilient observers, chronicling:

• Life at Versailles: An insider’s account of the glittering, decadent, and treacherous court of Louis XVI in the final years before the fall of the French monarchy.
• Surviving the Terror: A harrowing narrative of how Lucie navigated the most dangerous days of the French Revolution, witnessing friends and family arrested and sent to the guillotine.
• Escape to America: The remarkable story of an aristocratic family building a new life as farmers in upstate New York, grappling with a rugged landscape and new democratic ideals.
• The Bourbon Restoration: A firsthand perspective on the return of the French kings and the complex social landscape of post-Napoleonic Paris, including friendships with figures like Talleyrand and the Duke of Wellington.

Caroline Moorehead is the New York Times bestselling author of the Resistance Quartet, which includes A Bold and Dangerous Family, Village of Secrets, and A Train in Winter, as well as Human Cargo, a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist. An acclaimed biographer, she has written for the New York Review of Books, The Guardian, and The Independent. She lives in London and Italy.