Tom Wolfe writes that Charles Dickens "would gladly have died and gone to heaven" to have had the plot of this absolutely true story. Wolfe says Edith Wharton would have swooned to have been given characters as intriguing as those in this saga. (The "problem" with fiction, Wolfe writes, is that it has to be plausible. Real life doesn't.) "A Fragile Union" tells the story of Louise Herreshoff, born to New England nobility, and her truly bizarre childhood ... her tumultuous adolescence and stabs at romance ... her complicated relationship with odd, memorable Aunt Lizzie ... and love finally found, at age 66, in the arms of a man 28 years younger. They spent a quarter-century collecting exquisite porcelain, but only after death did it emerge that she was one of Impressionism's most gifted painters as well. This edition adds new color photos of porcelain they collected. It also contains 12 pages of color reproductions of Louise Herreshoff's stunning paintings.