The City That Keeps Meeting Me Halfway

Reflections on the 15th Anniversary of The Paris Wife

My relationship with Paris began the way many longings do: from a distance. When the idea of The Paris Wife came to me, I couldn’t afford to go there—and I had never been. I had three part-time teaching jobs, three children, two of whom were under five, and virtually no savings. And so, I read my way there, gobbling up every book I could find about Jazz-Age Paris and the ex-pats. I borrowed money from my mother-in-law to buy more childcare and writing time and parked myself at a Starbucks near my house in Cleveland and worked with heat and fervor that was nothing like anything I’d ever experienced before in my work.

And then a small miracle: writing that book—the dream of Paris assembled from paper—eventually gave me the ability to go. The book became a kind of ticket. That still feels like one of the stranger and more tender gifts of this life: the work carves a path that didn’t exist before, a bridge that can span an ocean.

The first time I arrived in Paris was in 2010, after I had delivered the book to my editor but before it was published. I didn’t do any of the expected touristy things. I didn’t go to the Eiffel Tower, or the Louvre, or the top of Sacré-Cœur. The Paris I had come to see was deeply intimate and specific. I wanted the city my characters walked through, the city that had been my companion for years even though we’d never met in person.

I wanted, more than anything, to stand at a particular blue door. It’s at 74 rue du Cardinal Lemoine, in the Fifth Arrondissement, where Hadley and Ernest Hemingway lived in their first Paris apartment in 1921. I remember touching the frame—bright blue, scuffed and chipped in a way that made it feel not preserved but inhabited—and then looking up at the windows with the uncanny sensation that time had folded for a moment. That the past and present were briefly sharing the same air.

Every time I’ve returned to Paris since, I’ve gone back to that blue door. It’s become a ritual, a small pilgrimage. It reminds me of the young writer Hemingway was once, hungry, determined, fully alive. It reminds me of a moment when the distance between my imagination and the world collapsed, until they were one and the same.

Somehow fifteen years have passed since then. It seems impossible, but that’s the thing about Paris. It doesn’t let you keep the same relationship with it forever. The city insists on change.

Working on my newest novel, Skylark, led me into the city’s deeper strata: a buried river, ancient quarry tunnels, the literal underworld beneath the postcard streets. I spent six hours underground with a cataphile who moved through the darkness as if he’d grown up there, pointing out carvings and inscriptions scratched into the walls by revolutionary soldiers and infidels — people who had come down here for refuge and escape. They didn’t know if anyone would ever read what they’d written. They did it anyway—simply to leave proof of themselves. You understand quickly, in a place like that, that Paris is not one city but many — built atop one another, braided through time. History isn’t an abstract idea. It’s a foundation. A temple, even.

Later, back on the street, I caught my reflection in a shop window and didn’t recognize myself for a second—not because I’d changed in the handful of hours in the tunnels, but because Paris always rearranges the light. I thought of that young writer in Cleveland, scribbling until the words felt real, and of the people underground who scratched their names into stone. And I realized that’s what Paris keeps teaching me: that the work—whether it’s a book or a life—speaks through layers. Aboveground we call it a city. Belowground it’s a record. Two kinds of faith. Two ways of saying: I was here.

But Paris is more than a mirror. It’s a portal. I’ve stepped into Paris at different ages and in different states of mind, and each time I’ve come out the other side slightly altered—recalibrated, as if some internal compass has been turned a few degrees toward true north. Over time, it has become part of the scaffolding of my life as a writer: a gateway not to escape, but to transformation. And so, I keep returning—back to that blue door, back to the streets that continually make room for my imagination—willing to be met halfway again.

Because Paris is ALWAYS a good idea…next Friday, 2/27, Rebecca Plotnick (Everyday Parisian) and I will host a live Q&A on Substack. Watch this space and our socials for more!

Giveaway

To honor the 15th anniversary, I’m giving away 3 signed copies of the book.

To Enter:

• subscribe to this Substack

• like this post

• leave a comment below mentioning your favorite city

Open internationally. Giveaway closes at 11:59pm EST on 2/25/26.

Good luck!

Yours,

Paula