It's August 1930 and storm clouds are brewing across Europe, heralding the rise of fascism and the upheavals of the Great Depression. Even so, these frightening realities can't stop twenty-four-year-old Betty Harbert from making the most of her tour of the continent. Sailing from Montreal with her wealthy Aunt Barbie and cousin Win, Betty attends a Parisian finishing school, tours Europe twice, and spreads joie-de-vivre wherever she goes. Based on a stack of letters written by the author's mother during her year abroad, this novel offers an exciting glimpse of inter-war life in some of Europe's great cities, through the eyes of a vibrant young woman who never failed to appreciate the magnificent world around her. Whether she's riding around the English countryside in her date's Morris Cowley sports car, at the salon getting a Marcel wave, or touring the Louvre and the Tuileries Garden, Betty's great wit and warmth come through in every line of this account of her adventure abroad.

After teaching high school physics and mathematics, Pat joined the world of industry, specializing in writing ironclad manufacturing procedures - think Dove soap. Pat has always found it easier to write non-fiction than to invent a storyline. Following retirement and divorce, she took a Life Stories writing course and published an embellished memoir about her transition from the devastating end of her forty-one-year marriage to the beginning of new marital bliss. Now, with Through Her Opera Glasses, Pat has invented an accompanying narrative to her mother's found letters, proving that she as just as skilled at inventing storylines as writing training manuals. Pat lives with her husband in Toronto.

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