Charyn admits to taking some liberties with her biography -- mainly by adding a few fictional characters -- but those characters serve to add depth and spice to the story, and serve as a foil to showcase Miss Dickinson's inner life. And what a rich inner life she has. For a 19th-century never-married lady, she is portrayed as having an active sexuality (which is possibly entirely imagined by the author).
Yes, she was quirky and eccentric, but she was also smart as a whip and had a wonderful sense of humor. I like that Charyn doesn't include any poems in the novel, because it seems that Emily was rather private about her "scribblings". And now I may pick up a volume of her poems to see if I find a hint of what Charyn imagined in Emily.
The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson: A Novel