G247 Book Review of Under the Wide and Starry Sky by Nancy Horan
Name of Book: Under the Wide and Starry Sky Author: Nancy Horan ISBN: 978-0-345-51653-4 Publisher: Ballantine Type of book: History, 1875-1894, Scotland, life after marriage, creativity, writing, islands and natives, England, France, friendship, encouragement, sickness, biography of sorts Year it was published: 2014 Summary: The passionate and turbulent story of Robert Louis Stevenson and his tempestuous American wife, Fanny. At the age of thirty-five, Fanny van de Grift Osbourne leaves her philandering husband in San Francisco and sets sail for Belgium to study art, with her three children and a nanny in tow. Not long after her arrival, however, tragedy strikes, and Fanny and her brood repair to a quiet artists' colony in France where she can recuperate. There she meets Robert Louis Stevenson, ten years her junior, who is instantly smitten with the earthy, independent and opinionated belle Americaine. A woman ahead of her time, Fanny does not immediately t...