This comprehensive, well researched biography perfectly captures the enigmatic Katherine Anne Porter, author of the superb 'Ship of Fools' - now sadly less read. Porter was a notorious fabulist, difficult to pin down as to the actual facts of her amazing life, but biographer Darleen Harbour Unrue gets to the bottom of it all. Beautiful and talented Porter wrote prolifically and was a Pulitzer Prize winner. She travelled all over the world, had multiple husbands and lovers (most of them far younger) and lived a long and complex life punctuated by ill health and the tragic loss of her children through miscarriage and stillbirth. This more than competent biography by Unrue draws it all together, warts and all, without resorting to the novelization that creeps into less professional biography - no supposition, no imputing of thoughts or feelings to the subject without a documented basis. There is necessarily a period in any author's life when that life consists of a series of sequestrations to write, and Porter was no different, but Unrue avoids the potential tedium and keeps the reader interested. Unrue also avoids any in-depth analysis of Porter's fiction, leaving readers wanting to find out for themselves. All in all both a tribute to a remarkable literary talent and an exemplary piece of biography.