The real love story of Frankenstein! In 1814, 16-year-old Mary Godwin fell in love with the 22-year-old married poet, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and in spite of the condemnation of their families and society, ran away to Paris, taking Mary's 15-year-old step-sister Claire with them, chased by the law and Mary's hated stepmother. Two teenage girls and the romantic poet of "free love" would walk across France, ravaged by war in the defeat of Napoleon, to Switzerland and up the Rhine River to a castle called Frankenstein, on an intimate journey of love, sexual awakening, and self-discovery, and find the real inspiration for the most famous name in literature. In this recently discovered secret autobiography, Mary Shelley reveals the intimate truth of that trip, the story of a rivalry between two sisters and the origins of her famous book.

In her published diary, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley wrote of where they went and what they saw, but never until now has been revealed the intimate secrets of where inspiration arose. Released from a promise to keep portions of the journey secret, Mary Shelley lays her soul bare in the intimacy of love, loss, and betrayal, the search for a mother's validation, and inspiration as a woman artist discovering her voice.