If Miguel de Cervantes had been a woman, what kind of book might he have written?  Would he, …um she, still have told the tale of a knight-errant and his loyal squire?  Or might she have written of a more feminine impossible dream?

Maddie Hunt has leukemia and her prospects are ‘dismal.’  Rather than be crushed by the diagnosis and the tortuous effort to beat the cancer into remission, Maddie continues to be the fighter and the idealist.

Her sister, Olivia, has pretty much everything that the cancer has taken from Maddie, except for that quixotic attitude toward life and the love of a rock-solid, faithful husband, Bobby.

Olivia is a single.  She loves Michael, but their careers supersede their romance.  Olivia’s career, these days, consists primarily of trying to make a fresh version of Don Quixote, starring John Cleese as Quixote and Robin Williams as Sancho.

When Olivia loses hope, it is her sister, Maddie, who pushes her to continue chasing windmills.

The True and Outstanding Adventures of the Hunt Sister is the first novel by Elisabeth Robinson, whose real life tracks awfully close to the fictional Olivia.  Robinson served as an associate producer on Braveheart (1995) and a producer of 2001’s Last Orders, starring Michael Caine, Bob Hoskins and Helen Mirren.

The real life sister of Robinson, Laurie, died of leukemia in 1998.  In a 2004 interview with New York magazine, Robinson explained:  “Writing was always how I worked things out.  My intention [with Adventures of the Hunt Sisters] was to come to terms with the way she lived and died – which was with the kind of idealism and optimism I never had.”

Which makes one wonder.  Did Cervantes imbue Don Quixote with the kind of outlook that he himself had?  Or, like Elisabeth Robinson, was Cervantes trying to come to grips with the life of another who he knew and admired?

The True and Outstanding Adventures of the Hunt Sisters was published in 2004 by Little, Brown and Company.  To date, Robinson has not published a novel or produced a film since.

Perhaps, the first book was enough.