About this item
Amsterdam, 1631: Sara de Vos becomes the first woman to be admitted as a master painter to the citys Guild of St. Luke. Though women do not paint landscapes (they are generally restricted to indoor subjects) , a wintry outdoor scene haunts Sara: She cannot shake the image of a young girl from a nearby village, standing alone beside a silver birch at dusk, staring out at a group of skaters on the frozen river below. Defying the expectations of her time, she decides to paint it.New York City, 1957: The only known surviving work of Sara de Vos, At the Edge of a Wood, hangs in the bedroom of a wealthy Manhattan lawyer, Marty de Groot, a descendant of the original owner. It is a beautiful but comfortless landscape. The lawyers marriage is prominent but comfortless, too. When a struggling art history grad student, Ellie Shipley, agrees to forge the painting for a dubious art dealer, she finds herself entangled with its owner in ways no one could predict.Sydney, 2000: Now a celebrated art historian and curator, Ellie Shipley is mounting an exhibition in her field of specialization: female painters of the Dutch Golden Age. When it becomes apparent that both the original At the Edge of a Wood and her forgery are en route to her museum, the life she has carefully constructed threatens to unravel entirely and irrevocably.
About the Author
Dominic Smith is the author of five novels, including The Last Painting of Sara de Vos, a New York Times Bestseller and a New York Times Editors' Choice. Sold into more than a dozen countries, the novel was also a "Best Book of the Year" selection by Amazon, Kirkus Reviews, Slate and the San Francisco Chronicle. In the US it was long-listed for the Carnegie Medal for Excellence from the American Library Association and in the UK for the Walter Scott Historical Fiction Prize. In Australia, it was chosen as the Fiction Indie Book of the Year by the Association of Independent Booksellers and the Literary Book of the Year as part of the Australian Book Industry Awards.Dominic's other novels are The Electric Hotel, Bright and Distant Shores, The Beautiful Miscellaneous, and The Mercury Visions of Louis Daguerre. His writing has appeared in numerous publications, including The Atlantic Monthly, Texas Monthly, the Chicago Tribune, The Paris Review, The Australian, and The New York Times. Dominic grew up in Sydney, Australia and now lives in Seattle, Washington.Learn more at www.dominicsmith.net
