This book is the story of Robert Louis Stevenson and his wife, Fanny Osborne. They met in France where Fanny and her children had fled to escape her philandering husband in California and Stevenson was spending time in an artists and writers colony attempting to follow his dream of becoming a writer despite just having completed a law degree at his wealthy and proper Edinburgh parents’ behest. RLS became smitten with Fanny, a strong and independent woman ten years his senior who returned to California after her husband visited France - Stevenson follows her when the marriage falters and after her divorce they get married and spend the rest of their days traveling in search of better health for RLS. In the meantime he writes the books that make him famous helped by Fanny- from England to Hawaii and finally to the South Pacific, where Stevenson died at age 44 from a brain hemorrhage.  I’m not sure how I missed this book because I have loved Stevenson and his books - and have been fascinated with his life- since I visited his house in Monterey where he stayed while waiting to Fanny’s divorce when I was 9. And I loved his poetry especially the children’s verse. I listened to this book on audio part of the time and the performer said Nevada wrong -using the East Coast pronunciation, not the one used by Nevadans (IYKYK) and she also said Edinburgh wrong. That did bother me. 
And here is the epitaph on Stevesnon’s grave , I have always loved  this poem

Under the wide and starry sky,
Dig the grave and let me lie.
Glad did I live and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will.

This be the verse you grave for me:
Here he lies where he longed to be;
Home is the sailor, home from sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.