Under the Wide and Starry Sky / Nancy Horan / 474 pgs

This is the story of Robert Louis Stevenson and his love interest, Fanny Van de Grift Osbourne.  It begins with Fanny taking her three children and their nanny and heading for Belgium to study art.  She is leaving behind her perpetually unfaithful husband, and the humiliation she has endured because of him.  Tragedy strikes and she moves to an artist colony in France.  It is here she meets young Louis Stevenson.  He is immediately smitten with the vivacious Fanny, but she is not as enamoured with the Scot who is ten years her junior.  Louis has just become an attorney to satisfy his fathers desires.  However, he has no intention of practicing law for his true love is writing.  He eventually wins her over, and follows her to America.  Their love affair spans the globe in the search for a place for him to write as well as one that would allow his lungs to heal.  Fanny eventually gets a divorce from her husband and marries Louis.  She becomes his wife, lover, confidant, editor and co-author.  Their life was never dull, always filled with drama of one kind or another.  The book started a little slow, but quickly picked up pace and interest.  I highly recommend it.