And as she witnesses the island's plant renewal efforts, she sees her own life blossom again.

Her grown-up adventure is a reminder of the value of choosing passion over security, individuality over convention, and the pressing need to protect the earth. Fleeson accompanies a plant hunter into the rain forest to find the last of a dying species, descends into limestone caves with a paleontologist who deconstructs island history through fossil life, and shadows a botanical pioneer who propagates rare seeds, hoping to reclaim the landscape. Native plants are dying at an astonishing rate-Hawaii is called the Extinction Capital of the World-and invasive species (plants, animals, and humans) have imperiled this Garden of Eden. Exotic and beautiful, yes, but as Fleeson awakens to this sensual world, exploring the island's food, beaches, and history, she encounters an endangered paradise-the Hawaii we don't see in the tourist brochures.

Imagine a one-hundred-acre garden estate nestled amid ocean cliffs, rain forests, and secluded coves. So, she quit her big-city job, sold her suburban house, and moved halfway across the world to the island of Kauai to work at the National Tropical Botanical Garden. Like so many of us, Lucinda Fleeson wanted to escape what had become a routine life. Compelling, illuminating, poignant, and deeply insightful, Paris Without End provides a rare, intimate glimpse of the writer who so fully captured the American imagination and the remarkable woman who inspired his passion and his art - the only woman Hemingway never stopped loving.

Paris Without End by Gioia Diliberto