I’ve been working on this book for years. These characters are my friends—no, my family.

NOTHING ELSE IS LOVE is the story of a Swedish immigrant, Rune Folkeson. It’s also the story of a French parfumerie heir, Lolotte Guillet. It takes place in Goteborg, Sweden, and in 1920s Grasse, France. It’s about poetry and perfume. It’s about family loyalty and a Japanese puzzle box with a secret. It’s about reality and its limitations.

But it’s also about reality’s hazy edges.

NOTHING ELSE IS LOVE also takes place in 1998 St. Paul, in a neighborhood known as Swede Hollow, and inside the labyrinthine tunnels beneath the city, where old-timey gangsters used to hide and traffic their illegal booze during Prohibition. It’s also where clandestine lovers met, where secrets were kept, ghosts were born.

In 1998, Alice Grier has a secret past life, one that she remembers vividly, one that seems to be haunting her. That specific clink-clank of the pipettes when she worked on her parfum, the subtle stinging smell of the perfumer’s alcohol, the earthy scent of the lavender buds, purple-gray on their stalks, covered in morning dew at dawn.

Him. Always him. His hands, capable and strong as he carved the little wooden bird, sitting on her porch, a smile playing at the corners of his mouth.

NOTHING ELSE IS LOVE is about a past life, an impossible mystery, a love separated by space, by time, an ocean, nearly a century.

This book.

I love this book. It was difficult to write, even more difficult to revise and get just right. It took me years. It pushed the edge of my writing ability. It made me grow. It scared me. I’m so very proud of it. I can’t wait for you to read it.

Thank you, Touchpoint, for taking a chance on Lolotte and Rune.