CALL ME ZELDA, by Erika Robuck

Join us for an in-person conversation about Call Me Zelda, Erika Robuck's brilliantly imagined novel that brings to life the glamorous but ultimately tragic relationship between F. Scott Fitzgerald (celebrated author of The Great Gatsby) and his wife Zelda.

From New York to Paris, Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald reigned as king and queen of the Jazz Age, seeming to float on champagne bubbles above the mundane cares of the world. But to those who truly knew them, the endless parties were only a distraction from their inner turmoil, and from a love that united them with a scorching intensity.

The story is told from Zelda's perspective, when she is committed to a Baltimore psychiatric clinic in 1932. Vacillating between lucidity and madness in her struggle to forge an identity separate from her famous husband, she finds a sympathetic friend in her nurse, Anna Howard. Anna—herself a captive to her own tragic past—is increasingly drawn into the Fitzgeralds’ tumultuous relationship. As she becomes privy to Zelda’s most intimate confessions through a secret memoir meant only for her, Anna begins to wonder which Fitzgerald is the true genius. But in taking ever greater emotional risks to save Zelda, Anna may end up paying a far higher price than she intended…

Book length: 352 pages

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