Captive to a staggering genius and mounting paranoia, Mademoiselle—the fictional incarnation of legendary French sculptor Camille Claudel—relives her art-making in Belle Époque Paris from the asylum where she's been captive for thirty years. The year is 1943, the height of the Vichy regime in war-torn France, and salvation comes in the form of Solange Poitier, the nurse who cares for Mademoiselle in her final days, and their growing friendship. In this compassionate, deftly-researched novel melding art history and storytelling, art and medicine mingle in the characters' rejection of the misogynistic conditions that would stifle their deepest ambitions and gifts. Best known as Rodin's muse and mistress, Claudel is given a voice here that's fiercely hers and her art a recognition long due.

Carol Bruneau's most recent title from Cormorant Books is Glass Voices. She is also the author of Berth. Her novel Purple For Sky (Cormorant, 2000) won the City of Dartmouth Fiction Prize and the Thomas H. Raddall Atlantic Fiction Prize. She is also the author of two collections of short stories, Depth Rapture and After the Angel Mill, both published by Cormorant Books. She has taught creative writing in the continuing education departments of Mount St.Vincent University and Nova Scotia Community College; she is now on faculty of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design University, where she teaches writing. Carol lives in Halifax with her husband and three sons.

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