CAROLINE LEAVITT: Cruel Beautiful World

The cover is even more entrancing when you hold the book in your hands as I just did for the last ten minutes.

Set against the backdrop of the sixties–the Vietnam War, communes, and the Manson Murders, CRUEL BEAUTIFUL WORLD is the story of sixteen-year-old Lucy who runs away with a much older man to live in hiding in rural Pennsylvania.  Her older sister, Charlotte. Charlotte, who has had much of the burden of Lucy’s care throughout their childhood, now has to manage tracking down her sister, which leads to an aftermath that no one, including and especially the reader, could foresee.

Caroline Leavitt is the author of ten other novels, two of which– Is This Tomorrow and Pictures of You, are NYT bestsellers. Cruel, Beautiful World I’m sure will be her next. The story is wrenching and intricate, the characters so believable that they might have lived next door to you. And the prose is so alive that each sentence lures you to the next. 

https://www.amazon.com/Cruel-Beautiful-World-Caroline-Leavitt/dp/1616203633