Product Description

BESTSELLER SHOW BOOK CLUB PICK NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY AND

From Nancy Horan, bestselling author of 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 Belgiumwith her three children and nanny in towto 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 artists 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 belle Americaine.

Fanny does not immediately take to the slender young lawyer who longs to devote his life to writingand who would eventually pen such classics as and . In time, though, she succumbs to Stevensons charms, and the two begin a fierce love affairmarked by intense joy and harrowing darknessthat 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 Stevensons own unforgettable tales.

Praise for

A richly imagined [novel] of love, laughter, pain and sacrifice . . . [Fanny Osbourne] kidnapped Robert Louis Stevensons heart.

Powerful . . . flawless . . . a perfect example of what a man and a woman will do for love, and what they can accomplish when its meant to be.

Spectacular . . . an exhilarating epic about a free-spirited couple who traveled the world yet found home only in one another. (starred review)

Horans prose is gorgeous enough to keep a reader transfixed, even if the story itself werent so compelling. I kept re-reading passages just to savor the exquisite wordplay. . . . Few writers are as masterful as she is at blending carefully researched history with the novelists art.

A classic artistic bildungsroman and a retort to the genre, a novel that shows how love and marriage can simultaneously offer inspiration and encumbrance.

Nancy Horan has done it again, capturing the entwined lives of Fanny Osbourne and Robert Louis Stevenson so uncannily, it reads like truth.Sarah Blake, author of

Horan has a distinct knack for evoking the rich, complicated lives of long-gone artists and the women who inspired them.

Fanny and Louis are wild-hearted seekers, and Nancy Horan traces their incredible journey fearlessly, plunging us through decades, far-flung continents, and chilling brushes with death. Ambitious and often breathtaking, this sweeping story spills over with spirited, uncompromising life.Paula McLain, author of