It came via phone, a literary agent on one end. They explained they were interested in a biography about Hurston and asked if Boyd might like to write it. Of course, she would, and so she began mapping out how, because there was no choice.

First, she used Hemenway’s book as a roadmap, discerning what undeveloped real estate remained out there. She started with the folks he didn’t talk to, the periods unfilled, and graciously, he helped her find some of those early lines of inquiry. What had previously felt like a daunting challenge molted into something like a calling for Boyd. As a black Southerner, a writer, and as a Zora head, she felt possessed.

She started with the myths and what appeared to be facts. She made lists of who, what, and where, but rather than lean into research, Boyd had to get with anyone and everyone alive who knew Hurston, because time was running out. For a few years, she crisscrossed “Zora’s Florida.”

“I had to start walking in her footsteps,” she said, and it was on the road where she started to feel close to Hurston, drawing the same lines across the state Hurston had. At times, it felt like they were driving together — Hurston a silent companion guiding her turns on the highway.

“It sounds odd, but in a spiritual way, I felt like she would lead me to those answers.”

Once Boyd established that connection, she put down the first lines in earnest and disappeared into the woods.

At that point in 1999, she was on staff at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, working part-time so she could finish the book. The work was coming slowly, and the chatter of life roared at home, so she asked for book leave.

The paper said no, so she quit and cobbled together sums from friends to amass $15,000, and she pointed the car south on I-75 for Sarasota, Florida — a little town along the Gulf of Mexico due West from Fort Pierce.

Boyd hemmed herself into a condo on Lido Beach, because she knew a friend in neighboring Manatee County, enough to remain social but not enough to distract her, and so her days were spent putting one word after the other, writing like hell. But as the days ran out, she found herself tracing the edge of the Gulf as the sun sank, thinking about Hurston doing the very same.

Once tourist season came, Boyd headed north to Hilton Head in South Carolina, returning briefly to Atlanta, and then finally, she crossed the state line to Florida once more. She’d planned to finish the book just a stone’s throw from Eatonville in Winter Park, but when that plan took a turn for the worse, she called her former landlord in Sarasota to see if she could hole up there. The landlord said come on; she’d leave the key under the mat.

In September 2001, Boyd filed the manuscript for Wrapped in Rainbows. Boyd returned from the post office and basked in one last sunset along the Gulf. “Maybe someday” was no longer someday.

She found it funny that among her friends, she was considered the “stable” one, but now she was living on bite-sized chunks of money, living out of a suitcase, and itinerant. For Boyd, that was tantamount to forming a connection to Hurston.

“I felt like I needed to experience that myself to write about it authentically,” Boyd said. She recalled Hurston’s first book acceptance, because when Hurston returned home that afternoon with the letter in hand, she found her belongings strewn across the ground, a pink slip stuck to the door. She’d been evicted.

“I didn’t come quite that close,” Boyd said, laughing. “But having that experience of moving from place to place while trying to create brought me closer to Hurston.” Boyd came to love Hurston for innumerable reasons, especially after so much time on her trail, but Hurston’s ability to be herself no matter the company or place, unapologetically so, stuck with Boyd.

“She was always herself,” Boyd said.