Now Comes the Lightning, set in the streets of Montmartre in the time of the music halls, tells the story of Fréhel (Marguerite Boulc'h), born in Paris to a poor, dysfunctional family, struggling with addiction and depression, and charts her career as a singer against the backdrop of two World Wars, the rise of the cinema and the disappearance of an older Paris. An exploration of performance, of celebrity, and of the desire to maintain control over one's own narrative; of Fréhel's frenetic and continual movement from place to place, moment to moment, Now Comes the Lightning is the story of a woman alone, living a career marked by periods of astonishing production and lengthening periods of absence.

Sarah Bernstein's writing has appeared in Prairie Fire, CV2, The Antigonish Review and The Malahat Review, and was shortlisted for the Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry. Born in Montreal, graduated from Concordia University and University of New Brunswick, Bernstein lives in Edinburgh. Now Comes The Lightning marks her literary debut.

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Beth Follett is the founder and publisher of Pedlar Press, a Canadian literary house. Her first novel, Tell it Slant (Coach House Books, 2001), a retelling of Djuna Barnes’s 1936 novel Nightwood, met with critical acclaim. Her poetry, prose and nonfiction work have appeared in Brick, Best Canadian Poetry 2019, and elsewhere. She lives in St John’s, NL.

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