The Love Affair

Set in the last half of the 19th C this is a fictionalised biography of a love story between a writer with an eccentric way of life and an older married woman. Fanny Osbourne, a woman of confused determination, brave in her outlook but uncertain of her needs, is married with three children and living in California. She tires of her husband's philandering and leaves, taking the children to Paris so her daughter can study art. After months of difficulties and extreme devastation she meets Louis, a penniless man with ill-health and a steady determination to become a successful writer. The Parisian bohemian society in which they mix counters the moral attitudes of the day; another man's wife and ten years older? Two years of a tumultuous and passionate affair pass before she has doubts and leaves him to return to her husband full of remorse and hope for her marriage. A year later her lover follows her, almost dying on the journey. Fanny does not know what she wants: Louis and uncertainty or security with a husband she no longer loves. She divorces her husband and they marry and sail for his home in Scotland. When his father dies he sees his inheritance as a ticket to travel. From then on their lives are an emotional rollercoaster taking on his every whim which he expects her to follow. Accompanied by his mother, wife and stepson Lloyd, Louis' love of the bohemian lifestyle and his search for a climate in which he can be healthy leads them following faithfully in his wake as they sail the Pacific Ocean. They finally settle in Samoa, where they build their home against odds of illness, environment and money. Fanny's daughter Belle, her husband and young son join them. The personal chemistry in the house becomes a silent battlefield but Louis remains blissfully unaware of the chaos building behind him. The dynamic is the whirlpool of impassioned storms pulling Louis three ways as the women swing between a co-operative force and split jealousies, smothering him almost beyond endurance. The household is claustrophobic; he loves them all deeply and loyally but he misses his friends, good male company; he is trapped by their love. They are all trapped by their love.

• | Author: karen steele
• | Publisher: Independently published
• | Publication Date: December 15, 2019
• | Number of Pages: 422 pages
• | Language: English
• | Binding: Paperback
• | ISBN-10: 1695574710
• | ISBN-13: 9781695574717