Excerpt from The Marriage of Opposites by Alice Hoffman, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

NEARLY ALL OF MY father's books were printed in French, many bound in leather with gold letters embellishing the spines. Every time a ship came from France my father was waiting on the dock, there to collect a parcel so he might add another volume to his library. I disappeared into that cool, shuttered room whenever I could. Girls did not attend school, but here in the library I found my education. My father taught me to read English, and Spanish and Hebrew, along with bits of Danish and Dutch, and of course we spoke French. He educated both me and my dearest friend, Jestine, although when we read aloud he laughed at our Creole accents and he did his best to teach us the more proper pronunciations. When my mother complained that I would learn more in the kitchen, and flatly stated that Jestine shouldn't be in our house at all, my father was furious. Jestine and I slipped under his desk, our hands over our ears so we couldn't hear the bitter words between my parents. I knew my mother thought I would be better served spending time with girls of my own faith, rather than befriending someone whose mother was an African and our cook. But of course, little of what my mother wanted meant anything to me.

JESTINE WAS AFRAID OF my mother, and shy around my father, and she never came back to the library. Instead, I brought books to her house and we read on the porch, where you could see between the slats straight into the ocean. Sometimes we read aloud in dreamy voices, with accents as elegant as we could manage, but mostly, I spent my hours alone in the library. I read while my mother was out with the society of good deeds, visiting women who had no husbands and children who were orphans, the sick and infirm and needy. I knew I was safe in the library, for my mother believed it to be the domain of my father, and after their argument about girls learning to read she never again came uninvited into that room.

As a reader, I first became engrossed in Histoires ou contes du temps passé, avec des moralités: Les Contes de ma mère l'Oye, what the English called Mother Goose. In every marvelous tale collected by Charles Perrault, there was the sting of truth. As I turned the pages, I felt as if there were bees on my fingertips, for I had never felt so alive as when reading. Monsieur Perrault's stories explained my own world to me. I might not understand all that I felt, but I knew a single one of his chapters was more enlightening than a hundred conversations with my mother.

Il était une fois une veuve qui avait deux filles: l'aînée lui ressemblait si fort d'humeur et de visage, que, qui la voyait, voyait la mère. Elles étaient toutes deux si désagréables et si orgueilleuses qu'on ne pouvait vivre avec elles.

Once upon a time there was a widow who had two daughters. The elder was so much like her, both in looks and in character, that whoever saw the daughter saw the mother. They were both so disagreeable and so proud that there was no living with them.

Perhaps that was what my mother disliked most. I resembled her. I could not help but wonder if for some women, that was the worst sin of all.

MY MOTHER AND I never discussed my education again, until one day she brought a hired man into the library to clean the window glass, and found me there. By then I was a serious girl of thirteen, nearly a woman, but I was sprawled upon the floor, my head in a book, my hair uncombed, my chores left to the maid. Madame Pomié threatened to throw the fairy tales away. "Take my advice and concentrate on your duties in this house," she told me. "Stay out of the library."

I had the nerve to respond, for I knew she wouldn't dare to deface my father's library. "This room doesn't belong to you."

My mother sent the hired man away and shut the door. "What did you say to me?"

"You know my father's wishes," I said. "He wants me to be educated."

Excerpted from The Marriage of Opposites by Cara Hoffman. Copyright © 2015 by Cara Hoffman. Excerpted by permission of Simon & Schuster. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.