Natalie, Book 1: Wild

Obedience was the first violence done to daughters.

Natalie Clifford Barney is young, wealthy, and being carefully prepared for a life she has no intention of living.

In the drawing rooms of Washington and the privileged world of her American family, a daughter is expected to be charming, accomplished, and eventually married. Natalie has mastered the first two requirements. The third presents a problem.

Her name is Eva Palmer.

With her extraordinary copper hair and a mind that refuses the ordinary boundaries of womanhood, Eva awakens in Natalie something more dangerous than a schoolgirl infatuation. She offers the possibility of being understood.

There are ancient Greek poets who seem to know more about love than the respectable adults around them. There are family expectations, carefully guarded secrets, and the exquisite recklessness of a girl discovering that the rules governing her life were made by people she has no particular reason to obey.

Natalie has been taught that desire is something a young lady must learn to control.

She is beginning to wonder why.

Wild is the beginning of a woman's refusal to live as someone else's idea of a woman.