These Good Hands is in bookstores now. Based on the life of French sculptor Camille Claudel, it's a story about misogyny and mental illness--and in equal measure, about compassion and the power of art, and of writing itself.

A long time coming...

A few mementos from the Vichy era in France--WW2-issue coins, a Nazi pin--and a key from a house once dear to my heart. Keys figure large in the novel, set in the asylum for the insane at Montdevergues, France.


These Good Hands--my fourth novel, a decade in the making--is due out this April. Can't wait to see the book in print. The past month has been like house arrest, doing the edits--but all good, all satisfying and great working with a fantastic editor. His toughness and keen eye have helped bring out the story's best. A whole lotta darling-slaying has been going on, the process that separates the good from the dross. Funny how we writers write a lot of stuff for ourselves--stuff we may need to know while telling ourselves the story, but stuff our readers can happily do without. It takes a really good editor to point this out and to help us cut the stuff that, in one famous writer's set of rules, is what nobody reads. Onwards.