The Importance of Paris

The author came of age in the "Paris of the Middle East," the vibrant, multicultural city of Beirut, Lebanon. But when civil war breaks out there her American expatriate family are caught in the crosshairs. Her sister is shot, and her father kidnapped. The overwhelming, unending violence forces them to leave the Middle East, which has been their home for twenty-one years. Despite escaping the carnage, Cynthia can’t get over what has happened to the place she once loved.
On a quest to comprehend Beirut's demise, Cynthia relocates to the real Paris, France, as Lebanon remains too dangerous to return to. Now a journalist, she decides to reconcile her losses by writing about the life of another woman her age, Georgina Rizk. A widowed Lebanese refugee also in Paris with her small son, Georgina had once been famous, crowned the Arab world’s first and only Miss Universe. Her sad fate illuminates deeper reasons behind the destruction of Lebanon. Via a series of tumultuous love affairs, friendships, and fraught encounters in the City of Light, the author comes to realize telling Georgina’s story is a substitute for facing the hardest truths about her own life. That’s the story she must write.