Melanie's Song, Paperback

Five young college women from California who shared their junior year in Paris once banded together to form a network of friendships they believed would last all their lives. Twelve years later, one goes missing. The instigator of the Paris trip, J.J., now a journalist, decides to uncover the fate of the missing Melanie Hart on a quest both professional and personal. Last seen, Melanie was the meek, besotted wife of a young classical musician. Now, rumors abound: Melanie had a breakdown and left him. She was seen at Woodstock. She was running drugs. She became a mystic, a mother, a radical. She may be on the lam. She may be dead. J.J.'s investigation leads her into a world of off-the-grid radical activists and bad cops, as well as the Hart family's own carefully constructed version of events. Played out against a background of Vietnam War protests, the Watergate scandal, and Richard Nixon's eventual resignation, J.J.'s investigation calls into question the very nature of choice, and what it means to lead an authentic life.

A native Californian, Joanna Biggar is a fiction and travel writer, journalist and teacher, and co-founder of the international travel writers' workshop, Wanderland Writers. Her articles, profiles, and travel writing have been appeared in hundreds of publications. For four decades, she has been a teacher of creative writing, journalism, essay writing, and literature on both coasts and abroad.