Under the Wide and Starry Sky by Nancy Horan (audio)

★★★★

"Writers should find out where joys and give it a voice."

In a similar style to Loving Frank, Nancy Horan tells the story of Fanny van Grift Osbourne. The year is 1875 and Fanny sees studying art in Paris as the only way out of her less-than-ideal marriage.  Travels with her three children and their Nanny, but being on her own is more complicated than Fanny expected.  She is denied admission to art school because she is a women and is constantly looked down upon.  Soon Fanny meets the inspiring writer Robert Louise Stevenson and she eventually finds love and a whole new set of challenges.

I felt that the book was a bit slow and drawn out at times, but I overall enjoyed it.  I loved the description and learning about the life of Robert Louise Stevenson.  The book gave a lot of interesting insight of what it was like to be an author and a women during the time period.  The whole "independent women" theme got a bit redundant at times (very much like the author's first book), but it brought out a lot of unique aspects on the limited choices that women had.

I tried reading Treasure Island to Isabelle, but it was way too wordy and long for her at the time.  We made it through the first few chapters though and it was a interesting companion to the novel.  I would like to read The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde at some point as well.