This biography of Josephine Baker gives a compelling portrait of her larger-than-life character, mercurial talents and the extraordinary career that made her a jazz-age superstar. It gives an account of her impoverished early years in America when segregation was the norm, and as a result of which she became a life-long champion of civil rights. It contrasts this period with her meteoric rise to fame in France and the exploits for which she became a legend: she flew planes in loop-the-loop, walked a pet cheetah along Parisian streets, was a wartime secret agent, lived in a chateau with 12 adopted children, earned and spent fortunes along the way, and was forced to give comeback performances well into her sixties to stave off bankruptcy. Whilst the text plays with layout, styles of typography and inserted quotation in the style of a narrative poem, the illustrations by Christian Robinson pay similar homage to their subject's theatricality and colourful exuberance.