Following Loving Frank, her debut novel about Frank Lloyd Wright's love affair with Mamah Cheney, Nancy Horan returns to tell the story of Robert Louis Stevenson and his American wife, Fanny van de Grift Osbourne, in Under the Wide and Starry Sky.
It's apparent Fanny and Louis were meant to be together. He was fascinated by Fanny's intrepid nature, and she proved an intelligent, loving companion, not intimidated by his repeated bouts of illness. Fanny found Louis to be the kindest, best man she had ever known. They moved in together, with Fanny's two children, before she was divorced--to the disapproval of both families.
Her need to lead a creative life was subsumed in Louis's own writing and his illness, which resulted in periodic bouts of mental breakdown. They went from France to England to Scotland and back again, always in search of inexpensive lodgings in a climate congenial to Louis's condition. In Samoa they built a home in a small village. Louis wrote every day, Fanny tended her garden, they swam and walked. One night, Louis collapsed with a cerebral hemorrhage and died. Fanny spent the rest of her days in San Francisco promoting Louis's literary legacy--and getting her own book published.
Since Horan wasn't there to hear them speak, she has "put into their mouths words from their written work or actual excerpts from their letters," with results that flow so logically and naturally the reader never questions the novel's authenticity. --Valerie Ryan, Cannon Beach Book Company, Ore.