"Never trust the teller," wrote D. H. Lawrence, "trust the tale." A pioneer of autofiction, no writer before Lawrence had made so permeable the border between life and literature. Eschewing the confines of traditional biography, Frances Wilson takes a new look at Lawrence's most vital decade, from 1915, when The Rainbow was suppressed following an obscenity trial, to 1925, when he was diagnosed with tuberculosis. Focusing on Lawrence's crises (in Cornwall, Italy, and New Mexico) and three central adversaries (his wife Frieda, writer Maurice Magnus, and his patron Mabel Dodge Luhan), Wilson uncovers a lesser-known Lawrence.