Dear Monica Lewinsky

The novel opens with a prologue styled as a medieval hagiography, or saint's life, recasting Monica Lewinsky's biography in the language of ancient Christian martyrdom. In this telling, Lewinsky is a servant to "the emperor" (President Clinton) who is publicly humiliated when prosecutors release graphic details of her affair to degrade her. After years of shame, America feels remorse, and Lewinsky becomes "exalted as the patron saint of those who suffer venal public shaming and patriarchal cruelty" (x). This framing establishes Lewinsky as a supernatural intercessor throughout the novel.

The main narrative begins in April 2019 with Jean Dornan, a 40-year-old court interpreter in Hoboken, New Jersey, who lives with a persistent sense that her life went wrong. She is married to Michael, a nurse, but their relationship is hollow. Jean receives an email from David Harwell, a British art history professor she has not heard from in 20 years, inviting her to a Festschrift, a celebratory academic tribute, marking his retirement as director of a medieval studies center in France. She digs through storage boxes and finds her diary from the summer of 1998, when she studied at David's program as a 19-year-old undergraduate. In the diary, she discovers a dismissive entry about Lewinsky and is overcome with shame. Jean's backstory emerges in fragments: After her summer in France, she pursued cooking in New York but was dogged by self-doubt rooted in whatever happened with David. She eventually quit and drifted into court interpreting, a sterile job she chose as a refuge from desire. She married Michael in 2010 but never told him the full truth. That night, drunk and distraught, she calls out to Lewinsky for help.

The next day, Jean breaks down crying during a trial and hears a disembodied voice: "Be calm, Jean. Do not be afraid" (12). Wandering lower Manhattan, she enters Trinity Church and descends to the basement, where she finds herself in a marble throne room: the en-suite bathroom of the Ritz-Carlton, Pentagon City, the hotel where the FBI once detained Lewinsky. Saint Monica sits on a golden throne in cobalt robes with a black halo fashioned from a beret. Jean confesses her past cruelty, and Monica forgives her. Monica urges Jean to attend the Festschrift, insisting Jean does not know her own story: She has cast David as either her creator or her exploiter but has lost herself entirely. Monica promises to accompany Jean back through the summer of 1998 so Jean can recover her truth.

The novel's longest section revisits that summer. The 19-year-old Jean, a bilingual Rutgers junior with a talent for cooking, arrives at Château Plaisy, a castle in rural France. The program is led by Professor James Neary, an older British academic, and David, his former student. Among the students are Sigrid, a tough American studying at Cambridge; Judith, a shy Harvard PhD student; Yoni, a witty Georgetown undergrad who becomes Jean's closest friend; Patrick, a devout Irish Catholic; and Sam and Brice, a married couple from Princeton.

Jean is assigned to document church windows but receives no instruction. David gives her books and proves warm and encouraging. Her Sunday cooking becomes a form of self-expression that transforms how the group sees her. She also develops what the present-day narrator dubs "Ruthless Jean," a calculating inner self that monitors every gesture through David's imagined perspective. She loses weight, fantasizes constantly, and writes erotic diary entries instead of academic notes. Interspersed with her narrative are condensed saints' lives from The Golden Legend, a medieval compilation, depicting young women tortured and killed by powerful men, then honored with churches built over their bodies. These hagiographies mirror Jean's experience with escalating irony.

Several events deepen Jean's entanglement with David. She accidentally dislodges a 12th-century stone molding while measuring a church window, and David's tender response strengthens their bond. Sam, the most disciplined student, warns Jean that her fixation on David stems from having no professional purpose. When Clinton's televised admission of the Lewinsky affair plays on the castle TV, the students mock Lewinsky. Neary erupts, berating them for failing to apply their scholarly minds to real human complexity. David's wife, Ann Harwell, a prominent scholar of medieval nuns, visits and leads the group to a convent, revealing how women's unsanctioned desire was constrained by patriarchal authority yet still produced world-changing devotion.

When Judith's jaw locks open from TMJ, a jaw-joint disorder exacerbated by her bulimia, David takes Jean and Judith to a hospital where Jean translates during a painful procedure. Afterward, in a parking lot, David kisses Jean for the first time. Days later, during the group's trip to Paris, David privately invites Jean to meet him alone. He takes her to a friend's apartment and begins undressing her, but Jean says she is scared and asks him to wait. He stops, and the moment collapses.

On the last night at the château, after a farewell dinner, Jean joins David in the library. Their intimacy escalates into a sexual encounter Jean describes in ecstatic, mystical terms. Patrick opens the door and discovers them. Back at Rutgers in September, David summons Jean to his office, apologizes for allowing their "friendship" to exceed "normal bounds," gives her an unfairly low grade, and tells her not to take his classes. Jean is devastated. By November she is spiraling, wandering past the history department at night.

The narrative returns to 2019. Jean wakes in her Hoboken kitchen, having nearly burned the house down while drunk. She buys a plane ticket to France. Monica appears again and articulates the novel's central insight: Jean possesses a power, her capacity for desire and connection, that patriarchal structures have always sought to suppress and shame. Jean initially imagines killing David at the Festschrift, but Monica rejects this. In a climactic vision, Jean reads a hagiographic entry for "Jean of Hoboken" in The Golden Legend that portrays her as a lustful woman who ruined her life and died at 43. Jean rejects this narrative, insisting she wants to keep her body and her life. She resolves to attend the Festschrift for public truth.

At Château Plaisy, Jean reunites with Sigrid, now department chair at Princeton, who reveals she ensured Jean received the invitation after David initially withheld it. Jean confronts David on the lawn, telling him he used his authority to deny what happened between them. He flatly denies they were ever intimate. Jean recognizes that her story threatens his entire professional legacy.

The final chapter shifts into the hagiographic style of The Golden Legend. A miracle occurs: Every student who rises to deliver a tribute to David finds themselves involuntarily recounting Jean's story instead. David is physically stuck to his seat, weeping. Jean does not witness any of this. She has descended to the kitchen, where she reunites with Jojo and Victoire, the château's staff, and helps them butcher rabbits. She thinks that this is what her knife is for. She walks outside, breathes deeply, and prays in gratitude to Monica. The novel ends with Jean feeling alone, alive, and very hungry.