New York: Riverhead Books, 2002. SIGNED first edition - The author's first novel, a story inspired by testimony of Grazida Lizier, a young woman tried by the Inquisition in 1320. "In Montaillou, a small village in south-west France. three generations of characters are torn between desires for spiritual grace and fleshly pleasure. [This novel] dramatizes how relatively small, and at times barely comprehensible, differences in faith served as the impetus behind a tragedy of enormous proportions." The title refers to one of the names used for the Cathars, a Christian sect that preached renunciation of the flesh. INSCRIBED on the half title page and dated in 2001, that is before publication. In this advance issue, the afterword precedes the novel. Map. Chronology. 389 pp plus an explication of the Cathar heresy.