The Paris photo

I was born in New York in 1950. I came to North Carolina and studied American Literature as a graduate student. Deep down, I always wanted to write a book…

I didn’t know much about my father’s past, he wasn’t very talkative. All I knew was that he served the USA as a soldier during WWII.

When my father died in 1998, I found a picture of him with an unknown woman and a boy in Paris with the Eiffel Tower in the background. There was only the name George Duval written on the back of this picture. I didn’t know if the woman in the picture was his lover or not. This made me very curious about his life.

A few years later after a lot of work, I managed to find George who was about 6 years old at the time that the photo was taken. He remembered my father from his childhood very well but they never heard a word about him after the war. He told me that my father used to visit him and his mom a lot during his time in France. To this day, I am not 100% sure whether my father was a lover of George’s mother.

After my journey to France, I finally found what I wanted to write my book about. I published my first book, The Paris Photo, which is a fictionalized version of my father’s story. I’m glad I dug deeper into my father’s past!

Jane Gabin
North Carolina, USA, 05 February 2019