An American Airman In Paris

New York Times bestselling author Beatriz Williams introduces Octavian Rofrano, from her novel, A Certain Age, in this short story about a lonely American pilot in 1920s Paris and those he’s never forgotten.

Octavian Rofrano has never met the girl whose photograph was his constant companion through the long days and nights of the Great War. The promises he made to himself and that far-away image in the silence of his cockpit have never left him, but the anguish and loneliness of post-Armistice Paris has crept into his bones. One night, Octavian finally decides to lose himself in the sad beauty the City of Lights offers, but as reminders of that 11th day of November fill his mind, can he let go of past hopes or does the promise of salvation still have a hold on him?

Originally published in the moving collection Fall of Poppies: Stories of Love and The Great War, this e-book also includes an excerpt from Williams’ new novel, A Certain Age, coming in June 2016.

Buy Now

More Writing

The Wicked City

A new Prohibition series begins with two generations of women inside a Greenwich Village apartment — a flapper hiding an extraordinary past, and a modern-day Manhattanite forced to start her life anew.

More on The Wicked City

Along The Infinite Sea

Each of the three Schuyler sisters has her own world-class problems, but in the autumn of 1966, Pepper Schuyler’s problems are in a class of their own.

More on Along the Infinite Sea

The Secret Life Of Violet Grant

Manhattan, 1964. Vivian Schuyler, newly graduated from Bryn Mawr College, has recently defied the privilege of her storied old Fifth Avenue family to do the unthinkable for a budding Kennedy-era socialite: break into the Mad Men world of razor-stylish Metropolitan magazine.

More on the Secret Life of Violet Grant