If you've seen the Claudel and Rodin: Fateful Encounter exhibit
at the Detroit Institute for the Arts, you know this story.
    Camille Claudel, a young student, and famed sculptor Auguste Rodin, many years her senior, fall passionately in love. He is an inveterate womanizer and the father of an illegitimate son, by a woman he refuses to leave. A brilliant sculptor, Claudel gradually descended into madness, destroying much of her own work and spending three decades in asylums.
    This dramatic love story caught the attention of prolific author Alma H. Bond, a psychologist who uses her insights into the human psyche along with detailed historical research to create Camille Claudel: A novel (PublishAmerica 2006). Her fascinating portrayal of the woman artist captures more than just a personality; it reflects the harsh world of women artists - indeed, of all women - in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
    Claudel suffered not only Rodin's frustrating attentions but the harsh reality of a world that did not accept the work of women artists. Her father recognized at an early age his daughter's talents, which he supported emotionally and financially throughout her life. Their relationship contrasts to Claudel's stormy connection with her mother, a cold and unloving woman.
    Bond's fictionalized biography, told with genuine emotion and depth in Claudel's voice, continues her tradition of providing fascinating insights into the lives of historical women. Previous titles include The Autobiography of Maria Callas, America's First Woman Warrior, I Married Dr. Jekyll and Woke Up Mrs. Hyde and Who Killed Virginia Woolf? A Psychobiography.

Dr. Bond's Web site.