“She let you read it?”

“Most of it. She kept changing the stories and rewriting entire sections, and the more she wrote the more muddled it became. She asked for advice, I gave it to her, and she always did the opposite. She was obsessed with it and wrote nonstop for two years. When the manuscript passed a thousand pages I quit reading. We were fighting a lot then.”

“What happened to it?”

“Talia said she burned it. She called one day out of her mind and said she had destroyed it for good and would never write another word. Two days later she overdosed in Savannah, where she was living at the time.”

“That’s terrible.”

“Twenty-seven years old and more talent than I’ve ever seen. A month or so after her funeral, I wrote to her mother and rather gently asked about what, if anything, Talia might have left behind. Never heard a word, and the novel has never been mentioned. I’m convinced she burned it, then killed herself.”

“How awful.”

“It was tragic.”

“You didn’t have a copy?”

“Oh no. She would bring the manuscript here for a few days and make me read it while she kept working. She was paranoid about someone stealing her masterpiece and guarded it closely. Poor girl was paranoid about a lot of things. In the end she was off her meds and hearing voices, and there was nothing I could do. Frankly, by then I was trying to avoid her.”

They pondered the tragedy for a minute or so, each sipping slowly. The sun was gone and the deck was dark. Neither had mentioned dinner, but Mercer was prepared to say no. They had spent enough time together for one day.

She said, “That’s a great story.”

“Which one? Dickens, Faulkner, Zelda, or Talia? There’s a lot of material there.”

“And you’re giving it to me?”

Bruce smiled and shrugged. “Take it or leave it.”

“And the Dickens and Faulkner stories are true, right?”

“Yes. But the best one is Hemingway and Zelda. It was Paris in the 1920s, the Lost Generation, all that colorful background and history. They certainly knew each other. F. Scott and Hemingway were pals and drinking buddies and the Americans all partied together. Hemingway was always on the prowl—he married four women—and had a kinky side. In the right hands, the story could be so salacious that even Myra would approve.”

“I could only hope.”

“You’re not too enthused.”

“I’m not sure about historical fiction. Is it history or make-believe? For some reason it seems dishonest to tamper with the lives of real people and make them do things they didn’t really do. Sure they’re dead, but does that give writers the license to fictionalize their lives? Especially their private matters?”

“Happens all the time, and it sells.”

“I guess, but I’m not sure it’s for me.”

“Do you read them? Faulkner, Hemingway, Fitzgerald?”

“Only if I have to. I try to avoid old dead white men.”