Devil's Pool

In a new translation The Devil's Pool is one of a group of pastoral novels inspired by the countryside of Nohant in Berry, where George Sand grew up. These novels are simple stories of country life, in which Sand records local customs and manners, depicting a timeless idyll, unaffected by the outside world and the political events of the time. With his wife dead, and three young children to look after, ploughman Germaine decides that the time has come to marry again. He embarks on a journey to meet a rich widow, Catherine Leonard, in a match which has been approved by his father-in-law; but he finds her proud and vain, and surrounded by other suitors. Germaine prefers the company of Marie, a young shepherdess from his own village, but she is insistent that she wants a younger, more suitable husband...'Early deaths and endemic poverty are treated here as part of natural life; and natural life, with its indomitable, instinctive force for continuity, is what she is celebrating...it seems to me a book...worth reading more than once.' - Victoria Glendinning