Caroline Leavitt is at her mesmerising best in this haunting, nuanced portrait of love, sisters, and the impossible legacy of family.
It's 1969, and sixteen year old Lucy is about to run away with a much older man to live off the grid in rural Pennsylvania, a rash act that will have vicious repercussions for both her and her older sister, Charlotte. As Lucy's default caretaker for most of their lives, Charlotte's youth has been marked by the burden of responsibility, but never more so than when Lucy's dream of a rural paradise turns into a nightmare.
Cruel Beautiful World examines the intricate, infinitesimal distance between seduction and love, loyalty and duty, and explores what happens when you're responsible for things you cannot make right.
Taking on the dark edges of the counter culture movement, Leavitt wields her trademark gift of heart pounding storytelling in this tale of a lovelorn teenager in the 1970s who runs away with her high school English teacher to "live off the land." When things go awry, her sister undertakes a quest to find out what really happened.