Loosely structured on the greatest identity crisis ever, The French Revolution is the hilarious, tragic, and deeply imaginative story of a San Francisco family forging its place in history.

Esmerelda Van Twinkle, a failed pastry chef turned outsized copy shop manager, stumbles into motherhood after a semi-intentional liaison with good-natured coupon distributor Jasper Winslow. Born on Bastille Day, their twin children Robespierre and Marat revolt against archaic rules imposed by their autocratic grandmother, surmount radically misguided parenting, navigate factional infighting, and combat wars in the Middle East to achieve great personal gain.

But just as the family is on the cusp of achieving meteoric success in politics, business, music, and gastronomy, fissures from the past crack open spectacularly, derailing their bid for long-lived power while cementing a reputation for the ages.

Matt Stewart blends vibrant prose, unforgettable characters, and a multi-layered plot based on the extremes of the historical French Revolution for a relentlessly entertaining debut novel. Viva la révolution!

Matt Stewart's short stories have appeared in Instant City, McSweeney's, Opium Magazine, and other literary publications, and he blogs regularly for The Huffington Post. He lives in San Francisco. The French Revolution is his first novel.

Esmerelda broke stride and stopped, then doled out the most intimidating hot-bitch glare in her repertoire. “Look . . . why don't you take your psychobabble sweet talk to someone who might fall for it and leave me the hell alone?”

The cyclist swung off his fiberglass weapon, undid the buckles and snaps on his helmet . . . tucked [it] under his arm and offered her a Gore-Tex-shrouded hand. “Bruce Zoogman, cakemaker.”

“Bruce Zoogman? Like Zoogman's Zoog?” Blackness encompassed her, prompting heavy breathing and paralysis and a quantum dose of nausea. From the leaky boat of memory sprang her culinary school professor and his access to the most famous cake in California, one bite of which had slam-dunked her into incoherency for just over three months while he fucked her like a warthog and her grades flat lined and her personal relationships soiled and all she'd been able to think about was another bite of that ambrosial meal-ender, Zoogman's Zoog.

“Yes,” he said flatly, straight factual acknowledgment.

“I heard you lived in a bunker and never came out,” Esmerelda spouted. “And that you're retired, out of the game.”

“With baking in your blood, can you ever be out of the game?” A serious structure firmed up his face, the hard humorless sheen of the devout, the crazy. “I seek perfection. Harmony. Unity. The exact blend of ingredients and emotion and craftsmanship that changes the course of people's lives.”

Esmerelda stared and marveled, love lighting behind her eyes, realizing this was the culinary equivalent of finding Christ under her pillow.