Better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all -well, yes and no. Read A CRUEL CALM’s view of this age old dilemma. Rita Mae Brown, Two-time Emmy Award nominee and acclaimed author of eleven novels. A CRUEL CALM, Paris Between the Wars, is a moving love story set in the era between World Wars I and II, a time of idealism and innovation when Paris was the cultural capital of the Western World. Politics, religion and social mores determine the fate of Elisabeth, a young Catholic socialite from Washington, D.C., as she learns whether it is only after great sorrow that love can come again. A CRUEL CALM brings Parisian society and culture alive as Elisabeth experiences the aftermath of the first world war while mingling with writers, artists and socialites such as Gertrude Stein, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Coco Chanel, Joseph Campbell and Ernest Hemingway. With the omen of a new world war brewing, this is a story replete with historical detail, universal conflict, and forbidden love.