becoming one of the richest and most famous women on the planet. Through her numerous books, the blockbuster films based on her work, and her ground-breaking charities, she touched the hearts and lives of millions. And yet, following her extremely controversial public stances on gender issues, Rowling became a pariah in circles that had once welcomed her with open arms.

Wunderkind author Solomon Schmidt spent years studying Rowling, conducting interviews, and traveling to many of the cities and countries where Rowling spent parts of her life. This biography follows Rowling from her childhood and university education in pastoral southern England, to seaside Porto where she became entangled in a violent marriage, to the depths of poverty as a single mother in cloudy Edinburgh, to red-carpet movie premieres in London, and beyond.

In exploring Rowling’s troubled past, Schmidt gives readers a window into her fraught teens – which saw her transition from a bullied bookworm into a punk teenager attending drug-filled music festivals – and her formative encounters with abuse, depression, and death in her twenties. This biography also tells the fascinating story of her penning of the Harry Potter saga and helps readers understand Rowling’s decision to speak out on the hot-button issue of trans identity.

This dramatic biography is filled with themes like triumph amidst failure, the redemptive capacity of love, the abuse of power, and courage in the face of death – and it is filled with memorable figures like Rowling’s kind-hearted mother, Anne, whose tragic illness and passing left an indelible mark on her daughter and on Harry Potter. Drawing on exhaustive research and numerous interviews – including with relatives of Rowling who shared their memories about her early life and family – Solomon Schmidt has told J.K. Rowling’s remarkable story in full for the first time.