City of Secrets: The Extraordinary True Story of One Woman's Journey to the Heart of the Grail Legend

It is 1955 and a fifteen-year-old girl, seeking adventure, escapes the greyness of postwar London for the cobbles, sunshine, and romance of an ancient Catalan city. When she falls in love with the place, she also falls for its charismatic leader. As the years pass and the girl becomes a woman and returns again and again to Girona and to her lover, the enigmatic José Tarres. She meets captivating characters and hears about visions, a strangely wealthy priest, a fabulous garden owned by a French woman... Cast as the detective in her own story, she finds herself caught up in a world she barely knew existed. The wealthy priest was none other than the Abbé Saunière of Rennes-le-Château, and the mysteries surrounding him are at the very heart of the modern Grail legend―the stuff of bestselling novels and movies, historical analyses, and esoteric intrigues. The people she has known for many years, including José, belong to a secret society that guards Saunière’s legacy. Now they ask her to be their messenger. It is time, they say, to present some of their closely guarded secrets to the world. The astonishing result is City of Secrets. Patrice Chaplin’s modern classic is a page-turning, true-life adventure, rich with photographs, remarkable letters, and antique documents. This new edition features an afterword in which Patrice reviews the impact of the book’s publication on her life and on Girona and its mysteries.  Read more