Paula McLain’s 2026 historical novel, Skylark, continues her interest in crafting narratives centered on resilient women, following bestsellers like The Paris Wife (2011) and Circling the Sun (2015). The novel combines two timelines set centuries apart but connected by the city of Paris and its hidden histories. In 1664, Alouette Voland, the brilliant daughter of a master dyer, defies the powerful guild by secretly creating a revolutionary blue dye, an act that places her in grave danger. In the 20th century, as the Nazi occupation tightens its control of Paris, Dutch psychiatrist Kristof Larsen and his young Jewish neighbor, Sasha Brodsky, navigate escalating persecution by finding ways to resist and survive. Both narrative timelines portray the ancient quarries and tunnels beneath Paris as a physical and symbolic realm of sanctuary, rebellion, and freedom. The novel explores Medicine and Bureaucracy as Tools of Oppression, How Art and Culture as Means to Preserve Memory and Identity through acts of creation and remembrance, and The Physical and Conceptual “Underground” as a Space for Resistance. 

This guide refers to the 2026 Atria Books hardcover edition.

Content Warning: The source text and this guide contain depictions of religious discrimination, gender discrimination, ableism, sexual harassment and violence, mental illness, pregnancy loss, child death, death by suicide, suicidal ideation, substance use, graphic violence, physical and emotional abuse, and illness and death.

Plot Summary

In the 17th-century Parisian dyeworks of Saint-Marcel, Alouette Voland, the talented daughter of master dyer René Voland, secretly pursues her own experiments, defying the strict laws of the dyers’ guild. While her father obsesses over perfecting a signature red, “Voland’s Scarlet,” Alouette dreams of creating a full spectrum of colors. She achieves a breakthrough by using arsenic, a dangerous mordant from the local tanneries, to produce a brilliant blue dye that rivals the finest indigo. Her ambition puts her at odds with the powerful Gobelin family who controls the guild, and her life is further complicated by the reappearance of her mother, Henriette, who left the family years ago during a mental health crisis. Alouette finds a confidant in Étienne Duchamp, a stonecutter at the newly reopened Butte-aux-Cailles quarry. As a romance blossoms between them, Étienne discovers that the Gobelin family is using the quarry tunnels for a smuggling operation, deepening the couple’s shared mistrust of powerful people. When René discovers and appropriates Alouette’s blue formula for his own purposes, she feels betrayed. Henriette warns her family that the guild is suspicious of their unsanctioned experiments, but is dismissed. After a clandestine night with Étienne, Alouette resolves to flee Paris, but returns home to find that her father has been arrested by the guild on charges of treason for allegedly trading formulas with Venetian dyers.

In 1939 Paris, Kristof Larsen, a Dutch psychiatric resident at Hôpital Sainte-Anne, is haunted by the death by suicide of his sister, Annelies. He befriends a charismatic Basque architecture student, Alesander Extebarria, who introduces him to the “souterrain,” a vast network of abandoned quarries and tunnels beneath the city. Kristof also grows close to his Jewish neighbors, the Brodsky family: Felix, a watchmaker; his wife, Rachel; and their children, the precocious, literature-loving Sasha and young Rald. As Germany invades Poland and the Nazi threat increases, Kristof’s work at the hospital becomes fraught with tension. A new administrator, Dr. Blaise Claudel, arrives to prepare the hospital for war casualties, championing the controversial use of electroshock therapy. The German occupation of Paris in summer 1940 brings escalating persecution. The Brodskys are forced to wear yellow stars, and their lives become circumscribed by antisemitic laws. One day, Felix is arrested in a roundup of Jewish workers and sent to an unknown work camp. Shortly after, Alesander vanishes from his apartment without a trace, leading Kristof to suspect his friend may have been a spy.

Following her father’s arrest, Alouette breaks into the Gobelin factory to search for evidence of his innocence but is discovered. In the ensuing chase, she falls into a vat of scarlet dye and is captured. The guild, led by Claude Gobelin, dismisses her claims of inventing the blue dye as female “hysteria.” Instead of a criminal trial, she is committed for “insanity” in the notorious Salpêtrière Asylum. Étienne witnesses her being taken away, powerless to intervene. Inside Salpêtrière, Alouette endures brutal “treatments,” including bloodletting and purges, administered by the cold physician Monsieur Moreau. She finds allies in two fellow inmates, the stoic Sylvine and the quiet Marguerite, and discovers she is pregnant with Étienne’s child. After Salpêtrière’s secret burial ground is exposed by a flood, Marguerite reveals she has been keeping a ledger documenting the superioress’s killing of babies born in Salpêtrière. Horrified and fearing for her unborn child, Alouette devises an escape plan with her friends, intending to use the ledger to expose the Salpêtrière’s crimes.

In July 1942, the French police conduct a massive roundup of Jews in Paris. Rachel and her children are arrested and taken to the Butte-aux-Cailles swimming pool, which has been converted into a temporary holding center. In a moment of unexpected mercy, children over 14 are released. Rachel forces a heartbroken Sasha to go, entrusting her to Kristof’s care. Sasha finds her way to Kristof’s apartment, but they are soon threatened by the collaborationist concierge. At the same time, Alesander reappears, revealing he is a resistance operative who has infiltrated the Vichy regime. He warns Kristof of Aktion T4, a secret Nazi program to euthanize psychiatric patients, which is being implemented at Sainte-Anne’s through starvation protocols. Kristof, along with his colleague, Julian Broussard, and an Austrian nurse named Ursula, joins Alesander’s network, altering patient records to save them from transport. After they successfully change a list, Julian is arrested by the Gestapo. Warned that he and his apartment are being watched, Kristof is forced to flee with Sasha and three other Jewish teenagers—Gérard, Maurice, and Annette—who have also escaped the roundup. He leads them into the sanctuary of the souterrain, where Ursula aids their escape.

Alouette, Sylvine, and Marguerite escape Salpêtrière by drugging the guards’ wine with valerian and navigating the sewer tunnels that connect to the rivers under Paris. During the difficult journey, Alouette suffers a miscarriage. They find sanctuary at the Sisters of Saint Catherine convent in the Marais, whose Mother Superior promises to use their evidence to bring justice. Meanwhile, Étienne, having received a message from the convent, travels from Saint-Marcel and finds Alouette at an inn in Lamballe. He tells her that her father died in prison two months after her arrest. The couple travel to Camaret-sur-Mer in Brittany, where they build a new life by the sea with Sylvine and Marguerite. Alouette compiles a book of local dye recipes, a “map of blue,” preserving the knowledge of the region’s women. Two years later, after giving birth to a daughter she names Christiane, Alouette dies from complications of childbirth, gazing at the sea.

In 20th-century Paris, Kristof, Ursula, and the four teenagers make their way south through the tunnels, following Alesander’s meticulously drawn maps. When a tunnel partially collapses, Alesander falls to his death while securing the path for the others. Grieving, Sasha marks the wall of his limestone tomb with a line from the poet Horace, “Not all of me shall die,” (410) and draws a small bird in flight. Intending to continue Alesander’s mission, the group emerges into the French countryside. They have become the first links in a new escape chain, continuing their journey toward the Pyrenees and freedom. 

In an Epilogue set in 1857, Alouette’s great-great-granddaughter, a master glazier, installs a new stained-glass window in Notre-Dame. She uses the unique “skylark blue” formula passed down through generations, etching a tiny, hidden bird into the glass—a symbol of lasting resistance and the legacy of a woman who refused to be silenced.