Ballantine Books
February 2014
On Sale: January 21, 2014
496 pages ISBN: 0345516532 EAN: 9780345516534 Kindle: B00C0ALY9O Hardcover / e-Book Add to Wish List
From Nancy Horan, New York Times bestselling author of Loving Frank, comes her much-anticipated second novel, which tells the improbable love story of Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson and his tempestuous American wife, Fanny.
At the age of thirty-five, Fanny Van de Grift Osbourne has left her philandering husband in San Francisco to set sail for Belgiumโwith her three children and nanny in towโto study art. It is a chance for this adventurous woman to start over, to make a better life for all of them, and to pursue her own desires. Not long after her arrival, however, tragedy strikes, and Fanny and her children repair to a quiet artistsโ colony in France where she can recuperate. Emerging from a deep sorrow, she meets a lively Scot, Robert Louis Stevenson, ten years her junior, who falls instantly in love with the earthy, independent, and opinionated โbelle Americaine.โ
Fanny does not immediately take to the slender young lawyer who longs to devote his life to writingโand who would eventually pen such classics as Treasure Island and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. In time, though, she succumbs to Stevensonโs charms, and the two begin a fierce love affairโmarked by intense joy and harrowing darknessโthat spans the decades and the globe. The shared life of these two strong-willed individuals unfolds into an adventure as impassioned and unpredictable as any of Stevensonโs own unforgettable tales.
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