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My rating reflects the author's efforts and not the interest of the subject. Rated on Kalo, I would have awarded a rating of five, because Frida Kalo is an intriguing and compelling subject, whose life and art are inseparable and awe-inspiring.

I became interested in Kalo when I attended the San Francisco La Raza Homage to Frida Kalo (1978); her work grabbed my gut. Prints of her paintings The Little Deer and her self portraits with monkeys and with Diego Rivera looking out from her third eye hung in my apartments and are still tucked into my old journals from that time in my life. Kalo was one of my beacons of light as I made my own way in life as an independent, quirky, and stubborn woman, hoping I could be half as brave in my life as she was in hers.

I found this particular biography a little frustrating in that the plates and photos were not well-positioned in the book, so I kept losing my place as I tried to read and refer to the visuals. The author, I think, may have glossed over important aspects of the artist's political life and focussed incessantly on her relationship with Rivera. And, most unfortunately, the book's cover is a photogrpah not of the subject, but of Salma Hayak as Frida Kalo in a movie.