Toklas encounters three Matisse paintings brought to San Francisco and resolves to travel to Paris to experience modern art firsthand.

Toklas arrives at rue de Fleurus for dinner and is overwhelmed by an atelier packed with strange and intimidating avant-garde paintings.

Toklas meets Pablo Picasso and his companion Fernande Olivier at Gertrude Stein's rue de Fleurus residence and is impressed by Picasso's powers of observation.

Stein begins buying Cézanne works from dealer Ambroise Vollard, founding the art collection that comes to define the rue de Fleurus.

The Stein siblings purchase Matisse's La Femme au Chapeau at the autumn salon despite the surrounding audience's widespread mockery of the work.

Picasso begins painting his portrait of Gertrude Stein, who poses repeatedly at his rue Ravignan studio before walking back across the city.

Toklas moves into rue de Fleurus and becomes Gertrude Stein's permanent life companion, typist, and curator of her manuscripts.

Picasso ends his long relationship with Fernande Olivier after she introduces him to her friend Eve, who becomes his new lover and muse.

Stein and Toklas attend the premiere of Nijinsky's Rite of Spring, where the audience's outrage at the performance erupts into a violent riot.

War breaks out while Stein and Toklas are visiting London; they struggle to return to Paris as England enters the conflict.

Stein and Toklas obtain a Ford truck they name Auntie and join the American Fund for French Wounded to aid war rehabilitation efforts.

Armistice Day arrives and Stein and Toklas witness the celebrations from the seat of their now exhausted truck Auntie.

Stein befriends the young Ernest Hemingway and becomes his literary mentor, urging him to give up newspaper journalism entirely.

Hemingway returns to Paris with his wife and newborn son; Stein and Toklas are made the child's godmothers.

Toklas lists her many domestic and secretarial duties as the reason she cannot write her own autobiography; Stein writes it for her.

The story begins with Alice Toklas's pivotal encounter with Matisse paintings in San Francisco, which draws her to Paris and into Gertrude Stein's electrifying circle of avant-garde artists at rue de Fleurus. Stein builds her defining art collection through dealer Ambroise Vollard and forges her most important friendships, including Picasso's famous extended portrait of her, while Toklas becomes her indispensable companion and typist. The prewar years are rich with artistic collaboration until Picasso's romantic life shifts and the outbreak of the First World War abruptly disrupts everything. Stein and Toklas commit fully to the war effort by driving a Ford truck for the American Fund for French Wounded and witness the Armistice from their exhausted vehicle. After the war, they become mentors to the Lost Generation, most notably befriending Hemingway and becoming godmothers to his son. The autobiography closes with Toklas's wry admission that Stein has stepped in to write her life story for her.

The headline events of two women at the heart of Modernism.

Toklas dedicates her early life to piano but her mother's death makes her realize the instrument was never truly her own passion.

Toklas visits Picasso's Montmartre studio, sees his strange and powerful paintings up close, and receives a drawing as a personal gift.

Stein is moved by Cézanne's portrait of a woman at Vollard's gallery and begins writing Three Lives, a book about three women.

Stein introduces Matisse and Picasso to each other; Matisse subsequently introduces Picasso to African sculpture, which influences his development of Cubism.

After failing to secure a literary agent, Stein decides to self-publish Three Lives and sends the manuscript to the Grafton Press in New York.

During a visit to Spain, Toklas falls so deeply in love with Avila that she declares she wants to live there forever, upsetting Stein.

Leo Stein announces he is moving permanently to Florence and he and Gertrude divide their jointly bought art collection between themselves.

By spring, Toklas senses that the vibrant prewar Parisian way of life she has known is irreversibly drawing to a close.

A German zeppelin attack on Paris occurs while Picasso and his companion Eve are dining with Stein and Toklas at rue de Fleurus.

Stein and Toklas flee to neutral Mallorca for nine months, where Stein writes Geography and Plays and Toklas knits for soldiers.

A German shell explodes close to their home near the Luxembourg Gardens and Toklas weeps, terrified of being made a refugee.

Newspapers begin parodying Stein's distinctive style; she writes to Life magazine editor Masson arguing she is funnier than her imitators and he agrees to publish her.

Spanish painter Juan Gris dies and Stein publishes a tribute that Toklas considers the most moving piece Stein ever wrote.

Stein meets F. Scott Fitzgerald and credits him as the only writer of his generation who writes naturally and correctly in sentences.

British poet Edith Sitwell champions Stein's work in England and arranges for her to deliver lectures at Oxford and Cambridge.

This pool traces the quieter but essential events surrounding the central story, beginning with Toklas's abandonment of piano after her mother's death and her first encounter with Picasso's raw, powerful studio work. Stein's literary life takes shape here, from the Cézanne painting that inspires Three Lives to the introduction between Matisse and Picasso that altered art history and the self-publishing effort at the Grafton Press. The prewar years bring personal turning points including Toklas's passionate love for Spain, the formal division of Leo and Gertrude Stein's shared art collection, and Toklas's quiet sense that the old Parisian era is closing. The war years bring zeppelin attacks over the city, an extended escape to neutral Mallorca, and the terror of a shell landing near the Luxembourg Gardens, alongside Stein's defiant response to newspapers that mock her style. The postwar chapters close with Juan Gris's death and Stein's moving tribute, her celebrated lectures at Oxford and Cambridge, and her meeting with F. Scott Fitzgerald.

The supporting events and relationships that shaped Stein and Toklas's world.

After repeatedly entertaining artists' companions in Paris, Toklas imagines writing a book titled The Wives of Geniuses I Have Sat With.

Picasso finishes his portrait of Stein by painting her face as a blank mask, declaring she will eventually grow to resemble it.

Matisse accuses Stein of losing interest in his work as her friendship with Picasso deepens; their once close relationship permanently cools.

Psychology professor William James passes Stein and awards her the highest grade in his class despite her deliberate refusal to sit his examination.

Stein grows bored with her medical studies at Johns Hopkins, abandons the degree, and eventually makes Paris her permanent home.

Stein begins inventing a new literary form by writing textual word portraits of the renowned artists she knows, including Matisse and Picasso.

In Granada, Stein's artistic ambitions shift decisively away from expressing human psychology toward conveying the visible appearance of the external world.

Stein and Toklas both break down in tears as the reality of German forces advancing toward Paris overwhelms them.

Stein and Toklas drive to Perpignan to work in hospitals and informally adopt military godsons, one named Abel, who comes to stay with them.

After Eve dies, Picasso introduces Stein and Toklas to his new social circle, including composer Erik Satie and artist Jean Cocteau.

Picasso and Stein enter a period of estrangement; Picasso marries and has a son; Toklas begins regularly embroidering tapestries from his designs.

Stein develops an eccentric new writing habit, composing sentences while sitting in her car parked amid the movement and sound of Parisian streets.

Stein dismisses Ezra Pound as a dull village explainer; Pound takes offense at the characterization and their friendship abruptly ends.

Hemingway's literary career rises to international fame and Stein bitterly accuses him of having eliminated his rivals to reach the top.

Carl Van Vechten brings singer Paul Robeson to rue de Fleurus and Stein lectures him that spirituals no longer belong to him.

This pool focuses on the moments of revelation and decisive change that shape both women's identities, beginning with Toklas's ironic fantasy about writing a book for genius-adjacent companions and Picasso's audacious declaration about his unfinished portrait of Stein. Stein's intellectual formation is traced through William James's extraordinary treatment of her at Radcliffe and her eventual abandonment of a medical career for the life of an artist in Paris. The middle chapters capture creative breakthroughs and rifts: Stein's invention of word portraits, her pivotal artistic shift toward the visible world in Granada, and the permanent cooling of her friendship with Matisse as Picasso takes precedence. During the war, the women's bonds are tested and deepened as they weep together over the German advance, adopt soldiers as godsons, and weather a period of estrangement with Picasso before the Armistice. In the postwar years, turning points cluster around literary relationships, from Ezra Pound's abrupt exit and the arc of Hemingway's rise over Stein to her racially charged encounter with Paul Robeson at rue de Fleurus.

The key decisions, discoveries, and emotional shifts that defined Stein and Toklas.