A dazzling novel in the voice of poet Lou Salome--protege of Nietzsche, lover of Rilke, and muse to Freud. In this boldly evocative novel famed literary muse Lou Andreas-Salome emerges from the shadows of the biographies and correspondences to tell her remarkable life story, from its beginnings in Imperial Russia to its menacing end in Nazi Germany. Her story unfolds through the three major loves of her life: at age twenty-one she meets the smitten and ultimately spurned philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche; at thirty-six she takes the fledgling poet Rainer Maria Rilke as her first lover; and at fifty she wins the deep affection of Sigmund Freud. She depicts a world including the Wagners, Tolstoy, Rodin, the Freud circle, Marlene Dietrich and Hitler, to name a few. Deftly weaving in the present-day character Anna Kane, a writer swept up in unraveling the link between her own grandmother and Salome, von der Lippe layers what is known about Salome with what can only be imagined. Blending themes of memory, religious faith, and human redemption, this novel transports us to a lost world and renders a multi-dimensional flesh and blood portrait of the elusive Lou Salome, as unforgettable as the woman who inspired it.