In the fourteenth century in southwestern France, a young woman from the mountain village of Montaillou was tried for heresy during the Catholic inquisition against the followers of a band of heretics called the Good Men. She was named Grazida Lizier, and her testimony inspired Charmaine Craig's powerful and gripping novel about a woman whose love for the wrong man was in part responsible for a tragedy of epic proportions.Spanning three generations, The Good Men follows the passions of characters torn between desires for spiritual grace and fleshly pleasure, and caught between the power of the written word and the pull of the natural world: Bernard, the young Dominican friar who enters the monastery as an orphan and at an early age takes on the charge of the Inquisition; Pierre Clergue, the village priest whose physical shortcomings, insecurities, and fierce attraction to the young Grazida lead him to betray himself and countless others; Fabrisse, Grazida's mother, who squanders her youth and desire on Pierre, never realizing that they are blood relations; Arnaud, a doctor's son, whose love of Ovid and one youthful sexual encounter make him a target for the Inquisition; and Grazida herself, whose devotion to nature and thirst for knowledge cause her undoing. Read Less