In his biography, Katz details the stories of many of Adams’ known romantic companions, combining these accounts with fragmentary records of her life. A key question posed in the book is why Adams failed to obtain U.S. citizenship despite stating her intent to do so in 1923. This status would have made it harder for authorities to kick her out of the country; Adams’ decision not to follow through ended up costing her her life.

In 1926, Adams was arrested and jailed for publishing Lesbian Love, which was considered “obscene” in the eyes of the law. She was also found guilty of disorderly conduct for supposedly trying to seduce an undercover policewoman named Margaret Leonard, who’d been assigned to entrap her. On top of her one-year sentence on obscenity charges, Adams was sentenced to six months at a women’s penitentiary—a pair of punishments that allowed authorities to start considering whether to ship her back to Poland upon her release from prison.

At a November 1926 deportation hearing, Adams argued that she hadn’t done anything wrong. “I can’t see why I should be singled out and sentenced to imprisonment for writing my book, which was only meant to show the humorous side of life, the serious side of life and tragedy, all in one,” Adams testified.

Despite Adams’ protests and pleas to remain in the U.S. and seek citizenship, she was deported back to Europe in December 1927. After that, she spent more than a decade rebuilding her life—but the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis cast an ominous shadow on life in Europe, especially for Jews.

While working as a journalist in Paris in 1933, Adams met Hella Olstein, a Jewish singer who performed at cabarets. The two women soon moved in together, residing in the same home for the next ten years. Although the stated nature of their relationship wasn’t entirely clear—at some point, Olstein married a man and became Hella Olstein Soldner, yet Adams continued to live with the couple—the two women appeared to be more than friends. “My guess is that Hella was bisexual,” Katz says.