Under the Wide and Starry Sky

✍ Scribed by Horan, Nancy

• Book ID: 109073445
• Publisher: Ballantine Books
• Year: 2013
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 1008 KB
• Category: Fiction
• ISBN-13: 9780345516534

✦ Synopsis

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • TODAY SHOW BOOK CLUB PICK

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 Belgium—with her three children and nanny in tow—to 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 writing—and 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 Stevenson’s charms, and the two begin a fierce love affair—marked by intense joy and harrowing darkness—that 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 Stevenson’s own unforgettable tales.

*Praise for Under the Wide and Starry Sky _

“Fascinating . . . a novel that shows how love and marriage can simultaneously offer inspiration and encumbrance.”— The New York Times Book Review_**
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“A lot of fun . . . Horan drapes this skeleton of facts with a richly imagined musculature of love, laughter, pain and sacrifice. Unlike Loving Frank, which focused on Mamah Cheney, Under the Wide and Starry Sky is a dual portrait, with Louis and Fanny sharing the limelight in the best spirit of teamwork—a romantic partnership.”— _USA Today _
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“Horan’s depiction of their life together is flawless. We are right there with the couple as they transform over the years.”— Fort Worth Star-Telegram_**

“Horan’s prose is gorgeous. . . . Few writers are as masterful as she is at blending carefully researched history with the novelist’s art.”*—The Dallas Morning News_

“A delight from start to finish . . . as stirring as any of R. L. Stevenson’s famous tales.”*— Hudson Valley News** _

“A dazzling love story that unspools across years and continents. Horan deftly brings to life a woman shamefully overlooked by history, and celebrates her contributions to the man whom history remembered.”*— BookPage_**

“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 The Paris Wife *

From the Hardcover edition.