Reading biographies often takes me a long time. The people move into my mental landscape, and I feel almost like I’m living life along with them in real time. (I had to return Ackroyd’s wonderful Dickens to the library eventually, before finishing it, so he’s still hanging out in my brain at the peak of his career.) For the past month or so my companions have been Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz, thanks to this engrossing book. (Eisler was recently at the Historical Society researching George Catlin and his family, and it turns out she knows my mother, hence my interlibrary loan.) O’Keeffe’s art doesn’t speak to me particularly, but Stieglitz’s photos, especially his portraits of Georgia herself, certainly do. The story of their relationship, the rise and fall of Stieglitz’s galleries (from 291 to An American Place), and O’Keeffe’s path to the Southwest (which seems so inevitable now) are particularly interesting, as are the canny ways they positioned and marketed themselves in the art world. Unsurprisingly, neither seems like someone you’d want in your own circle–all kinds of power corrupt. Eisler has chosen wonderful plates, and each chapter also starts with a painting or photo. I can’t think of any other woman whose image is more striking or iconic than O’Keeffe’s. Her little sideways smile haunts me still.