Call Me Zelda

by Erika Robuck

Overview

 Everything in the ward seemed different now, and I no longer felt its calming presence. The Fitzgeralds stirred something in me that had been dormant for a long time, and I was not prepared to face it....

 

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.

When Zelda is committed to a Baltimore psychiatric clinic in 1932, vacillating between lucidity and madness in her struggle to forge an identity separate from her husband, the famous writer, she finds a sympathetic friend in her nurse, Anna Howard. Held captive by her own tragic past, Anna is increasingly drawn into the Fitzgeralds’ tumultuous relationship. As she becomes privy to Zelda’s most intimate confessions, written in 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....

READERS GUIDE INCLUDED

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781101614150
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	05/07/2013
Sold by:	Penguin Group
Format:	eBook
Pages:	352
Sales rank:	75,755
File size:	921 KB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Erika Robuck is a contributor to the popular fiction blog Writer Unboxed, and she maintains her own blog, Muse. She is a member of the Hemingway Society and the Historical Novel Society, and she lives in the Chesapeake Bay area with her husband and three sons.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

Praise for Call Me Zelda
 
“This gem of a novel spins a different, touching story…You will love it, as I absolutely did.”—Tatiana de Rosnay, New York Times bestselling author of Sarah’s Key and The House I Loved
 
"Robuck effectively captures the Fitzgeralds’ turbulent marriage, as well as their inability to function—personally or professionally—beyond their jazz age heyday and into the Depression era."—Publishers Weekly
 
“Lovers of the Jazz Age, literary enthusiasts, and general historic fiction readers will find much to love about Call Me Zelda. Highly recommended.”—Historical Novels Review, “Editor’s Choice”

“In this richly imagined story, Erika Robuck has captured the creative brilliance and madness of Zelda Fitzgerald…an unsettling yet tender portrayal of two women inextricably bound by hope and tragedy.”—Beth Hoffman, New York Times bestselling author of Saving CeeCee Honeycutt
 
“[A] haunting and beautifully atmospheric novel…brilliantly brings Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald to life in all their doomed beauty, with compelling and unforgettable results.”—Alex George, author of A Good American
 
“A Jamesian sense of the uncanny haunts Erika Robuck's poignant, compassionate portrait of Zelda Fitzgerald's desperate dance with mental illness… mesmerizing, page-turning, and provides us with a fresh, very human look at two literary icons.”—Maryanne O'Hara, author of Cascade

Praise for Hemingway’s Girl
  “You’ll love this robust, tender story of love, grief, and survival on Key West in the 1930s…addictive.”—New York Times Bestselling Author Jenna Blum   “Fans of Paula McLain’s The Paris Wife will adore Erika Robuck’s spellbinding tale…an irresistible, exhilarating story of love and adventure.” —Dawn Tripp, Bestselling Author of Game of Secrets   “Dazzlingly written and impossibly moving, this novel is a supernova.” —Caroline Leavitt, New York Times Bestselling Author of Pictures of You   “Brings Key West to life.…Readers will delight in the complex relationships and vivid setting.”—Publishers Weekly   “Evokes a setting of the greatest fascination.…This is assured and richly enjoyable storytelling.”—Margaret Leroy, Author of The Soldier’s Wife   “Imagines the powerful and resilient women behind the mythical man. An inspiring story of heartache and renewal.”—Sarah McCoy, Author of The Baker’s Daughter   “I couldn’t put it down. I fell in love with Robuck’s Hemingway and with the fiery Mariella Bennet.”—Ann Napolitano, Author of A Good Hard Look   “Brings to vivid life the captivating and volatile world of a literary legend.” —Kristina McMorris, Author of Letters from Home and Bridge of Scarlet Leaves

Editorial Reviews

Robuck, who first explored the lives and loves of authors in Hemingway’s Girl, now turns to the tumultuous, codependent relationship of Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald. It’s 1932, and Anna Howard, a nurse who lost her husband and daughter in the Great War, is assigned to work with Zelda when she’s committed to Baltimore’s Phipps Psychiatric Clinic. Soon she’s drawn into Zelda’s charismatic but deeply unstable orbit, going so far as to quit her job to become Zelda’s private nurse when she leaves Phipps. Anna’s relationship with the Fitzgeralds is fraught and all-consuming, causing her to turn away from her own family and friends even as it seems to help her find a way back to herself. Robuck effectively captures the Fitzgeralds’ turbulent marriage, as well as their inability to function—personally or professionally—beyond their jazz age heyday and into the Depression era. What is less convincing is Anna’s motivations for being so immediately and utterly drawn to the couple. Neither this nor Anna’s eventual recovery—in which her relationship to the Fitzgeralds helps her return to healthy life—are as well articulated as is the portrayal of the Fitzgeralds’ rocky romance. Agent: Kevan Lyon, the Marsal Lyon Literary Agency. (May)

Publishers Weekly

"[A] haunting and beautifully atmospheric novel . . . brilliantly brings Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald to life in all their doomed beauty, with compelling and unforgettable results." —-Alex George, author of A Good American

From the Publisher

Robuck (Hemingway’s Girl) has again written a novel about a Roaring Twenties literary figure. This time she focuses on Zelda Fitzgerald, author, painter, dancer, and famous wife of novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald. Robuck creates a fictional character named Anna Howard, who acts as Zelda’s nurse, first in a mental hospital and then in the Fitzgeralds’ home. By crafting a narrator external to the Fitzgeralds’ social circle, Robuck is able to write about Zelda from an outsider’s perspective. Anna examines her own life’s tragedies through the lens of Zelda’s memories, marital failure, and mental collapse. Anna becomes Zelda’s confidante, providing opportunities for intimate conversation, honest criticism, and enduring promises.

Verdict Though less biographical than other recent fictional works about Zelda (such as Theresa Fowler’s Z or R. Clifton Spargo’s Beautiful Fools), this historical novel will appeal to readers interested in the famous Jazz Age couple. As an intimate portrait of a mentally ill artist and wife, Robuck’s latest work will be an easy read for fans of historical fiction or women’s interests. [See also the Tantorious audio podcast with Robuck, ow.ly/kCBs4.—Ed.]—Shannon Marie Robinson, Denison Univ. Lib., Granville, OH
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Library Journal

Yet another addition to what is becoming a gracious plenty of novels and biographies focusing on the Scott-Zelda relationship. Robuck's strategy is to create a first-person narrator, Anna Howard, who is Zelda's nurse at Phipps Psychiatric Clinic in Baltimore when Zelda is hospitalized for schizophrenia in February of 1932. Although Zelda is reluctant to open up to her doctors, she becomes more comfortable confiding in Anna some of the complex inner workings of her relationship with Scott. At first, Anna is an occasionally reluctant repository of Zelda's outpourings, for she's suffering from the loss of her husband during the Great War and the death of a beloved daughter from pneumonia, but soon, everyone at the clinic is relying on Anna for advice about the best treatment for Zelda. Anna encourages Zelda to write (she's working on Save Me the Waltz) and to extend herself by writing memoirs recounting her turbulent and toxic relationship. We meet Scott as well, of course, and find he can be charming and seductive as well as boozy and vindictive. (If he's not the greatest narcissist in American literature, he certainly comes close.) He inflicts great pain on Zelda by belittling her talents as a writer while at the same time cribbing some of her diary entries wholesale for Tender Is the Night. Eventually, Anna quits the clinic and becomes Zelda's private nurse when the Fitzgeralds take a house north of Baltimore. Anna and Zelda's relationship deepens to friendship and occasionally evinces a quasi-erotic quality on the part of Anna even as she develops a love relationship with Will, the best friend of her late husband. Although Robuck occasionally succumbs to a cloying sentimentality, she usually succeeds in skirting the soap-opera aspects of her subject matter.

Kirkus Reviews