I give this tome four stars, because it is exhaustive in it's content. I'm not entirely sure how the author could have pared it down without sacrificing the readers' ability to know their subject, Fanny Vandegrift Osbourne Stevenson, wife of Robert Louis Stevenson. She lived quite an interesting life, with her travels being at the forefront of her story. She seems to me like an accidentally worldly person; her first husband's fortune-seeking put her on a path of following him around the country. Then as a wife and mother, she was lacking personal satisfaction, and so headed to Europe to pursue artistic endeavors. There she met RLS, eventually decided to end her marriage to the philandering Sam Osbourne, and marry Stevenson. Quite scandalous in those days! The courage she had in building a life for herself and Stevenson on the Samoan islands is remarkable. She practically built their house herself, with few supplies and even less help. Her passion is also worth noting-she kept RLS alive by being willing to live wherever in the world his illness would go into remission. She knew that she could keep him alive by sheer determination, and she did. What I found most interesting about Fanny was her will to keep building and rebuilding her own life after her significant losses. All in all, an interesting biography of a woman I knew nothing about beforehand.