Don't let the name fool you—French author George Sand was not only a woman, she was a woman who was decades ahead of her time when it came to her disregard of social mores and standards of behavior. Her trailblazing take on life is on full display in The Devil's Pool, an unconventional romance of sorts in which Sand explores the stifling patriarchal traditions that often served virtually to imprison rural French women in the nineteenth century.