Ordering Information
$22.95, 6 x 9, PB, 262 pages
Publication date: November 7, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-963714-07-4
Copies are available through CasemateIPM.com
Courtship in Purgatory
A Novel
by Robert B. Perreault
When protagonist Victoria discovers a disturbing entry in her deceased father’s journal, she relives a painful episode dating back a quarter-century. At 33, Victoria lived a sheltered existence with her parents. Although she adored them, especially her father—she worshipped the water he walked on—she hoped to marry Lucien, whose working-class status did not measure up to her parents’ standards. Her father separated the lovers via a secret plot that threatened to smear Lucien’s image in Victoria’s eyes. Caught between the two men she loved, she wondered: Should she follow her conscience by obeying her father? Or should she follow her heart without knowing if Lucien was the morally upstanding man he appeared to be?
Readers’ Comments
“Historian Robert B. Perreault’s novel Courtship in Purgatory is an intimate look at the difficulties faced by two middle-aged lovers—Victoria and Lucien—in the Canadian-Franco-American enclave in Sagamore Falls, New Hampshire in the years after WWII. The characters are not laborers in the “dreadful sweatshops” of the textile mills, but middle-class people in the world of journalism. The story is both complicated and resolved by the central character—Victoria’s father, an inflexible traditionalist Republican Horatio-Alger businessman for whom social status, income, standing in the community and command over his children are important. His regard for his 33-year-old daughter as “my little girl”, his insistence on control and his abrupt change of attitude replicate the huge problem of this and every immigrant group: how to maintain hereditary values, language, religion and traditions while adapting to and fitting into the new. Does it finally come down to knowing when to capitulate?”
—Annie Proulx
“Mon Dieu, what a beautiful book. More than a great read; it’s a great experience for any reader who enjoys first-rate story telling in the hands of a master prose stylist who makes you think, laugh, and cry. For someone with my background, growing up Yankee in small-city New England with Canada French roots, it was more than great, it was profound and meaningful.”
—Ernest Hebert, author of The Dogs of March and other novels in the Darby Chronicles series.
“A wonderful book, deeply satisfying, and often very funny. There’s a sincerity to Robert Perreault’s storytelling that is rare these days. Courtship in Purgatory is an endearing love story that proves timeless. Its characters are unforgettable.”
—Diane Les Becquets, author of Breaking Wild and The Last Woman in the Forest.
“Courtship in Purgatory couldn’t be more meaningful to me.”
—David Plante, author of The Francoeur Novels: The Family, The Woods, The Country.
About the Author
Author Robert B. Perreault is a bilingual writer of mostly nonfiction books and articles about the New England Franco-American experience and/or the history of his hometown, Manchester, New Hampshire. He holds a BA in Sociology from Saint Anselm College (1972), including a year of study in Paris; an MA in French/New England Franco-American Studies from Rhode Island College (1981); and an MFA in Creative Writing (Fiction/Nonfiction) from Southern New Hampshire University (2008).
His writings in French, English, or both languages include seven books and more than 175 articles published in the US, French Canada or France. He is the author of a French-language novel, L’Héritage (1983), whose setting is Manchester’s Franco-American community. Since 1988, he has conducted conversational French sessions in the Native Speaker Program at Saint Anselm College. Manchester’s Franco-American Centre proclaimed him Franco-American of the Year (2012). Courtship in Purgatory is his first novel in English.
