Sign-In
Cart
Painting the Light
Hardcover
General FictionHistorical FictionLiterary Fiction
Currently unavailable to order
Please enter your email and a message will be sent to you when this product becomes available on our website.
ISBN13: 9780062916242
Publisher: William Morrow & Company
Published: Jun 1 2021
Pages: 368
Weight: 1.15
Height: 1.40 Width: 6.20 Depth: 8.60
Language: English
From the critically acclaimed author of Monticello and The Widow's War comes a vividly rendered historical novel of love, loss, and reinvention, set on Martha's Vineyard at the end of the nineteenth century.
Martha's Vineyard, 1898. In her first life, Ida Russell had been a painter. Five years ago, she had confidently walked the halls of Boston's renowned Museum School, enrolling in art courses that were once deemed unthinkable for women to take, and showing a budding talent for watercolors.
But no more. Ida Russell is now Ida Pease, resident of a seaside farm on Vineyard Haven, and wife to Ezra, a once-charming man who has become an inattentive and altogether unreliable husband. Ezra runs a salvage company in town with his business partner, Mose Barstow, but he much prefers their nightly card games at the local pub to his work in their Boston office, not to mention filling haystacks and tending sheep on the farm at home--duties that have fallen to Ida and their part-time farmhand, Lem. Ida, meanwhile, has left her love for painting behind.
It comes as no surprise to Ida when Ezra is hours late for a Thanksgiving dinner, only to leave abruptly for another supposedly urgent business trip to Boston. But then something truly unthinkable happens: a storm strikes, the ship carrying Ezra and Mose sinks, and they are presumed dead.
In the wake of this shocking tragedy, Ida must settle the affairs of Ezra's estate, a task that brings her to a familiar face from her past--Henry Barstow, Mose's brother and executor. As she joins Henry in sifting through the remnants of her husband's life and work, Ida must learn to separate truth from lies and what matters from what doesn't.
Painting the Light is an arresting portrait of a woman, and a considered meditation on loss and love.
Also in
Literary Fiction
Elizabeth Spencer: Novels & Stories (Loa #344): The Voice at the Back Door / The Light in the Piazza / Knights and Dragons / Stories
Spencer, Elizabeth
Hardcover
Philip Roth: Novels 1973-1977 (Loa #165): The Great American Novel / My Life as a Man / The Professor of Desire
Roth, Philip
Hardcover
John Updike: Novels 1978-1984 (Loa #339): The Coup / Rabbit Is Rich / The Witches of Eastwick
Updike, John
Hardcover
The Patrick Melrose Novels: Never Mind, Bad News, Some Hope, and Mother's Milk
St Aubyn, Edward
Paperback