A number of real historical figures play tangential roles in The Paris Hours, which is set in Paris in 1927. One of these is Gertrude Stein, a writer known for her poetry and the quasi-fictional memoir she penned about her life in Paris with her longtime partner, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (1933). But Stein may be even better known as a patron of artists and other writers, and the leader of a salon that served as a meeting ground for some of the most famous literary figures and artists of the time, many of them American expatriates, including Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Sinclair Lewis.

Gertrude Stein was born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania in 1874, but spent the first few years of her childhood traveling around Europe with her parents (who were German Jewish immigrants) and brothers. When the family returned to the States they moved to Oakland, California, where Stein lived until she turned 18 and left home to attend Radcliffe College (the female division of ...