A perfumer in Paris is forced to return to her California roots in an exhilarating novel about family, self-discovery, and taking risks by the author of The Candid Life of Meena Dave.
The daughter of proud Napa Valley hoteliers, Asha “Poppy” Patel chose a different line as a Paris perfumer, gifted with a nose for fragrances and business. Until her heightened sense of smell disappears. Her career in jeopardy, her world now muted, Poppy returns home. Maybe tending to her grandmother’s massive aromatic garden, where Poppy’s gift first flowered, will bring restorative hope.
But when she arrives, Poppy discovers that the land upon which the beautiful garden once thrived has been uprooted and destroyed. She realizes that the years she spent away from her home have loosened so many ties with the past. Torn between a mother who lives vicariously through her and a father who wants her to embrace her family’s legacy, Poppy is determined to chart her own path of rediscovery.
Poppy must juggle family drama, childhood friendships, and a former love to forge a future of her own choosing and, in time, heal an unscented life.
Excerpt
Asha’s future rested on the five vials in the center of the jet-black conference table. The room was quiet enough to hear the hum of office noise on the other side of the beige wall. Stomach in knots, she sat in a white swivel chair with her back straight, trying to project a confidence she didn’t quite feel.
The brief was aspirational – a fragrance that conveyed artist Paul Gauguin’s Tahiti for luxury perfume brand Guerlain. It was the historical nature of the project that had drawn her in. The idea of immortalizing a person in a 3.4-ounce bottle wasn’t daunting, but rather a welcome challenge. Especially because it would give her the blueprint for a scent close to her heart. She’d channeled all her creativity to build a perfume that was layered, unique, and captured not only the sense of place and time, but the artist and his volatile nature.
Yes, there were tropical notes, but she’d added smoke and earth to hint at the late 1800s. She’d included a touch of clove to convey Gauguin’s fiery temperament. Asha’s take won the account because she’d personified the whole artist, his talent, and his problematic nature. She hadn’t romanticized him, only evoked him. That’s why she’d been named perfumer, much to her colleagues’ surprise. At thirty-two, she was considered young, not only in age but experience for such a big responsibility. To date, Asha had never played a large role, merely assisted notable and talented perfumers. However, if she succeeded, she’d be that much closer to master perfumer – not only a goal Asha had set for herself, but an expectation of her mother and grandmother who had helped her get here, to this place and this moment.
If this didn’t work…nerves buzzed in her chest. Asha stopped herself from shaking her knee or swaying in her chair. Instead, she subtly bit the inside of her cheek as Esme Moreau, the head of marketing from Guerlain, sniffed multiple fragrance strips. The brand was under the powerhouse LVMH corporation, an important client for her employer, International Flavors and Fragrances. Esme was known in the industry for having a nose that could instinctively sense whether a fragrance would be a hit or miss. There was no room for average at this level.
And Esme gave nothing away as she moved from one vial to the next. Her two colleagues who, from past interactions, would support Esme’s decision without question, made notes in their leather covered notebooks. Asha pressed her black stiletto-heeled pumps into the tiled floor to keep her legs steady. It would work.
Scent had a memory component and Asha had an encyclopedic knowledge of thousands of essences she’d used over the course of her career. Never in her life had she leaned into the label her grandmother, past professors, and colleagues had given her – ‘a natural talent’. Yet, in this moment, she had to fervently believe that her gift and all she’d done to nurture it, would see her through.
“No.” Esme dropped the final scent strip. The slim woman leaned back in the chair and crossed her arms over her sleeveless navy dress. Her expression completely neutral as she rendered her verdict.
The two-letter word sat heavy in Asha’s ears, refused to penetrate her brain. Asha didn’t fail. Ever. Not in anything she tried. The lowest grade she’d ever gotten was a B+ in kindergarten because she’d hated nap time. She’d cried in her grandmother Leela’s lap for a full thirty minutes when she found out. Then she decided she would become good at napping until she got an A. It only took two months to perfect the art.
No. Esme had said no. And why not? The fragrance industry was not only competitive but cutthroat. It had been difficult enough for Asha to get here. Her boss Celeste Martine, who was an institution at IFF, believed Asha’s winning pitch had been a fluke. She’d questioned Asha at every turn, picked apart formulations, challenged ingredients and generally pushed Asha to work under constant stress. But Asha didn’t let that defeat her as she spent every waking moment on this fragrance. But that was before….
The conversation around her continued though Asha couldn’t focus on a single word. It wasn’t because of rapid fire Parisian French, which Asha spoke as well as any non-native, fluent speaker, but more that she had to figure out how to turn the no into a yes.
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