Sins of Omission Book

When Reuben Tarz meets Marchioness Michelene Fonsard, known as Madame Mickey, he is a wounded American soldier desperate to escape the hell of the French trenches. Madame Mickey offers another option — for Reuben and his best friend, Daniel Bishop, to live at her lavish chateau, where she will help them heal in body and soul.
Madame Mickey’s sophistication captivates the ambitious Reuben, and their affair is as tender as it is sensual. Then Mickey’s young niece, Bebe Rosen, arrives from California, scattering chaos in her wake. Bebe is instantly smitten with Reuben — and what Bebe wants, she gets. But every wish has consequences, and every sin has its price. And amid a tangle of seduction and betrayal, each will find a love powerful enough to change a life — or to destroy it…

Publishers Weekly

In this modern-day melodrama of paradise lost, Reuben Tarz and Daniel Bishop are rescued from a French hospital at the close of WW I to share a luxurious chateau with Mickey, a sexy French marchioness. Their tranquil retreat is shaken up by the arrival of 16-year-old Bebe Rosen, daughter of an American movie mogul. Michaels creates a test of love for Reuben, Mickey and Bebe that each inevitably fails. The rest of the novel charts their punishment. Aside from Daniel and Reuben's friendship born of the adversities of war, and Mickey's maternal devotion to the illegitimate son born of Reuben's rape of Bebe, no love endures, and any apparent understanding between the sexes is an illusion destined to be violently shattered. Michaels's novels (the Texas trilogy) always evince a strong sense of morality, but here this has turned sour and vindictive. The Hollywood setting in which Bebe and Reuben work out their fates is a hollow, unconvincing cliche--as though Michaels can barely stand to ponder the ugly, despair-sodden world she depicts. (Nov.)