Natalie, Book 3: Undone

Natalie Clifford Barney has never lacked for lovers. Renée Vivien is another matter entirely.

In Belle Époque Paris, where women may be admired as muses but are less readily forgiven for becoming poets themselves, Renée is writing a world of her own. Brilliant, exacting, and fiercely devoted to the possibilities of language, she is not easily reduced to anyone's romantic ideal.

Natalie is accustomed to pursuing what she desires.

Renée has desires of her own.

Between them, poetry becomes an intimacy as charged as touch. Letters carry provocations that cannot always be spoken aloud. The ancient world offers a vocabulary for passions that modern society would prefer to leave unnamed.

But two women can reject the authority of men and still disagree profoundly about what love demands.

Natalie believes in freedom. Renée understands the power of devotion. Each sees something in the other that is impossible to ignore and difficult to possess.

Their attraction is immediate. Understanding one another will prove a more complicated art.

Undone is a novel of poetry, desire, and the exquisite danger of meeting a woman who refuses to become what you need her to be.