Jean Stafford burst upon the literary scene in 1944, when, at the age of twenty-nine, she published her bestselling novel, Boston Adventure. Three years later, Life magazine hailed her as the "most brilliant of the new fiction writers." Bafflingly, for the rest of her life, Stafford would struggle--and fail--to capitalize on that early promise.

David Roberts' compelling biography examines Stafford's disastrous marriages, including her first marriage to the volatile poet Robert Lowell, which culminated for her in a lengthy stay in a psychiatric hospital. Beautiful and...