The French government has honored romance novelist Danielle Steel for her contribution to the arts.
Steel, author of "Sunset in St. Tropez" and numerous other novels, was awarded the Order of Arts and Letters in a July 10 ceremony in Paris, her publicist said this week.
She spent most of her childhood in France, and French was her first language.
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"I don't write like Shakespeare, but I think there is a certain amount of merit to what I do," the 54-year-old author said when asked about her reputation as a "commercial writer" in a recent interview.