Courtney Love is one of those rare public figures whose life reads like a novel — a sprawling, unpredictable, chaotic epic stretching across continents, cultures, tragedies, triumphs, scandals, rebirths, and reinventions.

Today, she is remembered as a rock icon, a grunge-era lightning bolt, a Golden Globe–nominated actress, a cultural disruptor, and the bold, unfiltered frontwoman of Hole.

  But to understand the woman she became, one must first walk through the storm she survived. Her story is…