In Eve La Salle Caram’s Please, San Antonio! an emotionally isolated American woman’s trip to Rome becomes a powerful quest to find what she has lost: her creativity, identity, and “an open place in her heart. In Cecilia Manguerra Brainard’s Melisande in Paris, a young seamstress from the French countryside comes to Paris to assist her dressmaker aunt, and rediscovers her talent, strength, and a precious “feeling of wholeness” in her new lover’s arms.