My true wife and the best friend I ever had,” wrote Ted Hughes after Assia Wevill’s 1969 suicide. Long seen as the woman who lured Hughes away from Sylvia Plath, Wevill has remained a mysterious figure. Now, for the first time Yehuda Koren and Eilat Negev tell the story of Wevill’s remarkable life and the seven years she spent with Hughes before killing herself, and their daughter, in a manner that inevitably recalled Plath’s suicide six years earlier. Drawing on previously unavailable papers, including Wevill’s diaries and intimate correspondence with Hughes, Koren and Negev offer a gripping portrayal of the uneasy life the couple shared under Plath’s long shadow.