“In 1951, Elizabeth Bishop boarded a ship bound for Rio de Janeiro for a two-week holiday with friends. Once there, she fell in love- and two weeks became seventeen years.

In this mesmerizing debut novel, Michael Sledge creates an intimate portrait of bishop- of the years she spent in Brazil and her love the dazzling aristocratic Lota de Macedo Soares. Drawing from Bishop’s personal correspondence to reveal the poet’s intensely private world, Sledge portrays a literary genius who lived in conflict with herself both as a writer and as a woman. As her seemingly idyllic existence in Lota’s glass house in the jungle gives way to the truth of Bishop’s lifelong demons and battle with alcoholism, her status rises as modernism’s most celebrated writers.” [from bookjacket – Counterpoint Press 2010]

Whether you are a fan of Elizabeth Bishop’s poetry, read the wonderful collection of her correspondence with Robert Lowell, Words in Air or not, you will be moved by this compassionate portrait of two women artists in search of themselves who for a time, found great happiness in one other.