Z by Therese Ann Fowler

 

This is the story of Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald.  Zelda was a Southern girl and meets Scott as he is sent to her town for training before going overseas for World War I.  But time intervenes and he is never sent there.  He returns to New York and proposes to Zelda.  She refuses to marry him until he finishes his first book and starts to get established.

But once they are married, they become New York's Golden Couple.  They go out every night, partying and dancing and drinking.  They meet everyone and Scott continues to write and climb the ranks of successful authors.  They travel to Paris, to Italy, places where Scott believes he will be able to concentrate and write.  But the parties are everywhere.  The couple has a daughter, Scottie, and Zelda starts to tire of her life.  

The book mainly follows the Fitzgeralds in their successful years but as the book winds to an end, the sad things emerge.  Scott becomes an alcoholic who can't write without drinking and who leaves the house for days for more partying and other women.  Zelda attempts to carve out a life for herself with painting and dancing but eventually is diagnosed with mental illnesses and suffers a series of breakdowns that leave her hospitalized.  

This is the definitive book about the Fitzgeralds in fiction form.  Fowler has meticulously researched the couple and their lives, using their letters as a primary source.  There is much discussion about Ernest Hemingway as Scott regards him as his best friend while Hemingway and Zelda despise each other.  Fowler discusses the early stirrings of feminism as women start breaking away from seeing being a wife and mother as their main definition and she captures the wild, frantic partying of the era.  This book is recommended to readers of historical fiction.