The actor and screenwriter's first work of fiction, set in World War I, delicately and elegantly explores the romance of a young Midwestern enlisted man and the courtesan supplied to him behind enemy lines.

The actor and screenwriter's first work of fiction, set in World War I, delicately and elegantly explores the romance of a young Midwestern enlisted man and the courtesan supplied to him behind enemy lines.

The beloved actor and screenwriter Gene Wilder's first novel, My French Whore, set during World War I, delicately and elegantly explores a most unusual romance. It's almost the end of the war and Paul Peachy, a young railway employee and amateur actor in Milwaukee, realizes his marriage is one-sided. He enlists, and ships off to France. Peachy instantly realizes how out of his depth he is--and never more so than when he is captured. Risking everything, Peachy--who as a child of immigrants speaks German--makes the reckless decision to impersonate one of the enemy's most famous spies.

As the urbane and accomplished spy Harry Stroller, Peachy has access to a world he could never have known existed--a world of sumptuous living, world-weary men, and available women. But when one of those women--Annie, a young, beautiful and wary courtesan--turns out to be more than she seems, Peachy's life is transformed forever.