Alberta and Freedom

Alberta Selmer escapes from her cold, suffocating provincial life in Norway to seek out the summer riches of Paris: a city where the bohemians will never die, where there is absinthe, endless talk of cubism and the petrol engine is replacing the horse on the Champs Elysees. However, Paris in the first decade of the twentieth century is a huge sea on which Alberta and her freedoms are cast. With no connections, few work prospects and little money, Alberta is forced to become an artists model. She poses for an English artist until her limbs ache to keep herself from starvation, all the time fearing that news of her occupation might spread to fellow exiles in Montparnasse, or worse still, back to home. Although she begins to write small pieces for newspapers and periodicals, Albertas self-esteem is low and her youth and loneliness cause her to become vulnerable to the casual approaches of predatory men. Relationships, when they happen, are neither easy nor happy. She has not yet found her talent and her freedoms may stagnate.