Cruel Beautiful World

"With Cruel Beautiful World, Caroline Leavitt has done the seemingly impossible: she's written a gorgeous, seductive novel that is also terrifying and pulse-pounding. This is the kind of coming-of-age novel for which readers yearn: we witness the emotional and spiritual evolution a sixteen-year-old girl while American society, in the early 1970s, seems to devolve all around her. Like the era it represents, Cruel Beautiful World is at times hopeful and nihilistic, beautiful and savage, mesmerizing and dangerous." –Wiley Cash, author of A Land More Kind Than Home and This Dark Road to Mercy

“Backdropped by the Vietnam War and the Manson murders, Cruel Beautiful World is a fast-moving page-turner about the naiveté of youth and the malignity of power. Leavitt explores with a keen eye the intersection of love, family, and the anxiety of an era.” –Lily King, author of Euphoria

“A riveting novel about love and loss, secrets and lies, and what it means to be a family. Its twists and turns will keep you reading late into the night.” –Christina Baker Kline, author of Orphan Train

“Leavitt's most accomplished book yet . . . A seamless triumph of storytelling that follows an unusual family through a fraught and shapeshifting century.” –Gail Godwin, author of Flora

“At once a page-turner that leaves you holding your breath, and a gorgeous meditation on love and family. Cruel Beautiful World had me in its thrall from start to finish.” —J. Courtney Sullivan, author of The Engagements

“Tender and tragic, with a shooting star of hope, Leavitt's profound latest is about the connections of siblings, the mystery of love—first, last and dangerous—and the struggle to accept what can never be changed.” —Sara Gruen, author of At the Water’s Edge