Carrie Kipling was one of the most unpopular women of her generation. Henry James called her that hard, capable little person', Rudyard Kipling's parents detested her. And yet Carrie was in many ways misunderstood. Drawing on a vast archive of diaries and letters, Adam Nicolson cuts right to the heart of the Kiplings' dysfunctional marriage. For the first time here, Came is seen for the woman she was - not as the bullying tyrant intent on controlling her genius husband, but as a bastion of American courage in the face of serial family tragedy.