THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER At the age of thirty-five, Fanny van de Grift Osbourne has left her philandering husband in San Francisco to set sail for Belgium to study art, with her three children and 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 take to the young lawyer who longs to devote his life to literature rather than the law - and who would eventually write 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 decades as they travel the world for the sake of his health following their art and dreams eventually settling in Samoa where Robert Louis Stevenson is buried, with these words on his grave: Under the wide and starry sky, Dig the grave and let me lie. Glad did I live and gladly die, And I laid me down with a will. This be the verse you grave for me: Here he lies where he longed to be; Home is the sailor, home from sea, And the hunter home from the hill. (Requiem, Robert Louis Stevenson)
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER TODAY SHOW BOOK CLUB PICKLook for special features inside. Join the Random House Readers Circle for author chats and more.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 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 Treasure Island and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. 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.
El 9 de abril de 2009 se cumplen 50 años de muerte de Frank Lloyd Wright. Amar a Frank, aclamada por la crítica y el público estadounidense, es una poderosa novela que ilumina aspectos desconocidos de la vida del genial arquitecto. En 1903, Frank Lloyd Wright empezó a trabajar en la casa de una pareja de Oak Park: Edwin y Mamah Cheney. La relación entre Mamah y Frank sacudiría a la sociedad de Chicago y cambiaría para siempre las vidas de ambos, hasta un trágico desenlace. Minuciosamente documentada, la novela de Nancy Horan retrata los Estados Unidos de la época y también la Europa de las vanguardias, y nos permite conocer no sólo la verdadera personalidad del padre de la arquitectura norteamericana del siglo XX, autor de obras emblemáticas como la Casa de la Cascada y el Museo Guggenheim de Nueva York, sino también la batalla de Mamah Cheney: una mujer que se vio obligada a elegir entre sus roles de madre, esposa, amante e intelectual.
The international bestseller. When renowned architect Frank Lloyd Wright ran off in the early 1900s with Mameh Cheney, his clients wife, polite Chicago society was shocked. While both abandoned their children, it was Mameh who paid societys price - a price that had shocking consequences.