A New York Times Notable Book 2016

An October Indie Next List "Great Reads" Pick

Following the final illness and death of her husband Eric, Katrin--a writer of brief lives of minor figures of European Romanticism--decides to fight against his absence by writing the story of his life. Desperate to know Eric as he had been before she loved him, to fetch his early years into those that she must now face without him--Think of me then, Katrin, Eric told her on his deathbed, never forget me then, that lad gaily assuming the land and its roads and traffic would never be anything but kind--she begins, through letters and diaries and conversations with his childhood friends, to reconstruct a pivotal period of his life, uncovering an early affair Eric had with a Parisian artist. As the young couple's increasingly impossible love rushes toward its devastating conclusion, past and present intermesh in unexpected ways and Katrin begins to understand how that period of Eric's youth impacted Katrin's love for him and the marriage the two of them shared. Passionate, profoundly moving, and lyrically written, The Life-Writer offers up an unforgettably heartbreaking portrait of a brilliant woman who grieves for her beloved by writing what others wouldn't dare: the story of his first true love.