The Heart Note: A Novel

A novel of scent memory, the secrets mothers hold close to their hearts, and the daughters who uncover them.

“Vanessa McCausland beautifully weaves together three women, three time periods, and three mysteries in an immersive novel that kept me turning pages until the very end.”—Jill Santopolo, New York Times bestselling author of The Light We Lost and The Love We Found

A whispered confession leads one woman to Grasse, France, the perfume capital of the world, where she begins to uncover a mystery that reaches across generations.

2022: Eva is adrift; her sense of smell has vanished after illness, her marriage is fraying, and her mother, Lily, is slipping deeper into dementia. But when Lily, in a moment of fractured clarity, speaks of something she did in Grasse twenty years earlier, her daughter is compelled to follow the trail.

2001: Lily and Eva couldn’t be more different as they venture around France. One is fiercely independent and imagines a big, creative life ahead, one is stuck in the role of “parent” and “wife.” After a tense argument, the two are separated, leading Eva to explore the country on her own, and Lily to meet a handsome widower.

1532: Heli is the daughter of the most renowned glove maker in Grasse. She has an affinity for flowers, but washing leather in the canals leaves her ashamed of her stained hands and the stink of her skin. She longs to learn her mother’s craft, concocting intoxicating vapors and tinctures. When her mother falls ill, she decides to create mixtures of her own, stumbling upon an invention that will change the town, the history of perfume, and have echoes far into the future.