The only YA book to tell the story of George Sand and the
courageous fight for women’s rights in the 19th century.
George Sand was the most popular novelist of the mid-19th century,
and the pen name of Amandine Aurore Dupin. Sand wasn’t looking for
scandal or subterfuge by using a pseudonym, but for freedom to live
and to write, which she found by dressing as a man, writing under a
man’s name, and loving who and how she chose. Her actions were an
affront to the prejudices of the 19th century and a formidable lesson
in courage.
Young Aurore grew up torn between two women and two worlds: the
conventional and narrow bourgeoisie of her paternal grandmother, who
raised her in the countryside, and the modest, Parisian environment
of her whimsical mother. Refusing to become the stereotype of
femininity, she dreams of another world, where she can breathe,
uncorseted, away from the strictures of social expectation. She
ignores the slander and rumors that follow her, and builds a free
woman’s life, deeply respected by friends and contemporaries like
Victor Hugo, Honore de Balzac, Gustave Flaubert and many others.
Using her fame as a writer, she fights for women’s and workers’
rights. She is the model of an emancipated woman.
