Rachel Field was born in the waning days of the 19th century in the Massachusetts town of Stockbridge. Hers was a family of some note, featuring Congressmen and Supreme Court Justices – New England aristocracy. She attended Radcliffe and published her first work at the age of just 16.

It was in those teenage years that Field first fell in love with Maine – specifically, the islands just off the coast. She spent summers there for years before mustering up the capital – economic and emotional – to purchase her own place on Sutton Island, a house she named “The Playhouse.” Her early adulthood was split between New York City and her island refuge; she would make the leap to Hollywood later in life with her husband and child.

She would become a celebrated author. Her early successes came as a playwright, but she would win accolades for her fiction, winning the aforementioned Newbery Award as well as an inaugural National Book Award for her 1935 novel “Time Out of Mind,” and she wrote poetry her entire life.

Field fell out of the popular consciousness long ago, but there were those who would remain devoted to and inspired by her work. And when Robin Clifford Wood wound up in that same island house so loved by Field, she was inspired to find out more about who this woman was.

Wood’s journey is the foundational piece of “The Field House” – the fieldstone, if you will, that bears the weight of Rachel Field’s story. She shares that connection with her readers, introducing each chapter with a letter she has written to Field. It’s a thoughtful and effective way in which Wood interweaves her own journey with that of her subject.

And it is quite a trip. Through exhaustive research, Wood is able to paint an increasingly detailed portrait of Field – by combing through her correspondence, Wood is able to develop a sense of the woman beyond the (not inconsiderable) amount that is revealed in her published work. Her personal relationships, her triumphs and misfires – it’s all here. And shot through it all is Field’s boundless love for her island haven.

“The Field House” is a biography first and foremost. The thoroughness of the research directly correlates to the quality of the life’s story being related. In that sense, Wood certainly succeeds – despite the relative dearth of available material, Wood manages to develop Field’s tale with a wonderful degree of depth.

But all biographies are refracted through the prism of the person writing them. Rather than battle against her own feelings of connection, Wood embraces the subjectivity, folding her own story around the edges of Field’s. We’ve seen hybrid memoir/biography before, but Wood’s epistolary tactic – introducing the reader to her connection via the letters she writes to her subject – is something different. And it works beautifully.

Fame is fleeting. Today’s superstar can easily become tomorrow’s shadow. But there is still reason to remember those who have been largely relegated to the dusty archives of the past. Thanks to the throughline of a still-standing island house and a literary synergy, Robin Clifford Wood has brought Rachel Field back to the forefront. “The Field House” is a thoughtful and tender exploration of a great talent gone too soon and unremembered too long.

Before I read this book, I had never known Rachel Field. And now? I’ll never forget her.