Painter of the Revolution
Date Published: forthcoming January 13, 2026
Publisher: Acorn Publishing
Labille-Guiard refuses to be silenced.
The daughter of Parisian shopkeepers, Adélaïde dreams not of
marriage or titles but of earning a place among the masters of French art.
With Queen Marie Antoinette on the throne and a spirit of change in the air,
anything seems possible. But as revolution brews and powerful forces conspire
to deny her success, Adélaïde faces an impossible choice: protect
her life—or fight for a legacy that will outlast her.
Inspired by the true story of one of the first women admitted to the Royal
Academy of Painting and Sculpture, Adélaïde: Painter of the
Revolution is a sweeping, evocative portrait of ambition, courage, and
resilience in the face of history’s fiercest storm.
Janell Strube makes a mean barbecue sauce. She’s also a world traveler,
a baker, and a bicyclist. But when she writes, her identity as an adoptee
often steers her attention to topics of alienation, erased history, and
displacement.
In 2024, a personal essay of hers was published in the anthology Adoption and
Suicidality. Her work has also appeared in Shaking the Tree: brazen. short.
memoir and A Year in Ink. Her short memoir, “Taking my Blonde Daughter
to a Black Lives Matter Rally,” was selected for the 2020 San Diego
Memoir Showcase, an annual live storytelling event.
While much of her writing is personal, she enjoys the freedom that comes with
crafting fiction. Her desire to learn about forgotten female artists who
shaped the French revolutionary period motivated her to write
Adélaïde: Painter of the Revolution.
When not crunching numbers as a tax executive for a hotel chain, she can be
found hanging out with Shiloh the Wheaten and plotting her second book.
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