THE OPPOSITE OF CHANCE

In 1981, after discovering that her husband has been shamelessly cheating on her, a 32-year-old woman travels alone throughout Europe, trying to distract and lose herself in the people she meets in the various countries she visits.

Betsy is a Midwestern librarian who has grown up in the sheltered environment of Catholic school, married at a young age and tried unsuccessfully to have a child. She is thrown into turmoil when she learns that her husband has been blatantly cheating on her, not only with other women, but with women who are their mutual friends. This stinging betrayal understandably sends Betsy reeling, and she comes to believe that traveling as a woman alone in Europe will be a balm to her wounded spirits and hopefully prove to be a distraction and maybe even give her the opportunity to meet someone new. And indeed, in her travels through France and Italy and Ireland, she encounters all sorts of people: a French financier who grew up on a rabbit farm; a lawyer from Florida who's just been jilted by his fiancée; a Pakistani gambler; a pair of American engineers and their beguiling love interest; the owner of an elegant small hotel hugging the shore of Lake Como; and, ultimately, a swashbuckling lighting technician who saves her from being trampled in a riot in Dublin and with whom she ultimately falls in love. Using a bold and fascinating picaresque technique, we meet, through Betsy's point of view, a host of fascinating characters, but then transit into the point of view of these characters, the result of which becomes a vivid texture of American and European sensibility that, in the end, allows Betsy to find peace. Margaret Hermes grew up in Chicago and lives in Saint Louis. Her short fiction collection, Relative Strangers, was the recipient of the Doris Bakwin Award. In addition to dozens of stories that have appeared in journals such as Fiction International, The Laurel Review, Confrontation, River Styx, and The Literary Review, and in anthologies such as 20 Over 40 and Under the Arch, her published and performed work includes a novel, The Phoenix Nest, and a stage adaptation of an Oscar Wilde fable. When not writing, she concentrates her energies on environmental issues.