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W. H. Auden was thirty-two and Chester Kallman eighteen, when Auden fell in love for the first time - and for always. Stormy, passionate, often unhappy, their intimate attachment would endure for thirty-four years. It was Chester Kallman who was with the great poet at his death in 1973. Long before, Auden had written to Kallman, "If only we have faith in God and in each other, we shall be permitted to realize all that love is intended to be." A story never told before, here is the true account of that moving, sometimes comic, always intriguing love affair. The brilliant Oxonian Auden wanted their relationship to be stable, deep, lasting "marriage," but the profligate, charming, unfaithful Kallman, a Brooklyn-born Jew, put Auden through jealous agonies that almost led to murder. Dorothy Farnan, a longtime member of the Auden-Kallman circle who eventually married Kallman's father takes us inside the dazzling world of some of the century's most celebrated artists - including Igor Stravinsky, Benjamin Britten, Stephen Spender, Christopher Isherwood, and Tennessee Williams - as well as into Kallman's demimonde of sailors and "rough trade" lovers. Not since "Portrait of a Marriage" has and book plumber so deeply the bond between two gifted individuals... or told a love story so touched with desire, torment, and unending devotion.