The Posthumous Affair : A Novel by James Friel

In the late nineteenth century, in Washington Square, two children play with a red balloon . . . and so begins the strange romance between Daniel, beautiful but tiny, and Grace, known as The Fat Princess, an orphaned girl whose enormous girth matches her wealth. Each wishes for a life of the mind, for artistic mastery, to be read and to be understood - most of all by each other. And yet through their lives, the lovers only occasionally meet, until Daniel uncovers Grace's great secret in her House of Death.