First Published: 2020
The novel starts in Edenton in March 1940.
Three children are running, happy to enjoy spring. One of the children is a three-year-old girl, and as she runs after her brothers, she stumbles. Her eldest brother comes to pick her up, and when he looks to check what made his sister to fall, he sees that it is a man lying in the river. He is dead, and the boy tells his brother that they need to go because everybody knows that finding a dead white man with some black folk always leads to problems.
The novel then introduces a main character, Morgan Christopher, who has been in a correctional facility for women for a year, and she needs to serve one more year. We don’t know what Morgan did, but it has something to do with a girl. Morgan is twenty-one, and her relationship with her parents is difficult. That day Morgan is led to a private room because she has a visit. In the room she finds two black women she has never seen before. The women introduce themselves as Lisa Williams and Andrea Fuller, who is a lawyer. Lisa tells Morgan that her father was the famous artist Jesse Jameson Williams, who Morgan admires greatly. Jesse died recently at the age of 94, and Lisa tells her that her father left some peculiar instructions in his will. These instructions involved the gallery that is to open in two months, and in the hall of the gallery an old mural of 1939 should go. The strange thing is that Williams wants Morgan to restore the mural, so Lisa and Andrea are going to try to get Morgan free. Morgan is confused because Williams didn’t know her, and even though he used to help new artists, they were usually black, and she is white. Besides, she knows nothing about restoring works of art. Lisa doesn’t have much information but the thing that those were her father’s instructions.
So a week later Morgan leaves the prison. Lisa is waiting for her because Morgan is to live with her while she restores the mural. It is clear that Lisa is not happy with this situation, and all Morgan cares about is she is free again and is doing whatever it takes not to return to prison.
The book alternates between Morgan and Anna Dale, who is the artist who painted the mural that Morgan needs to restore. Anna painted the mural in 1939 after she won a competition to paint a mural for the post office in Edenton. It was shortly after she lost her mother, who suffered from depression, and I think she committed suicide. The people from the commission which chose Anna to paint the mural told her to go to Edenton so that she could learn about the place and its culture, which should be reflected in the mural. So Anna travelled there. What Morgan knows about Anna is that she didn’t finish the mural because she got unwell. Actually, Lisa says that she became crazy. Then for some reason the mural ended in Williams’ possession.
I love the beginning of this book. Diane Chamberlain is one of my favourite authors, and it has been a while since I last read one of her books, so I am sure I am going to enjoy this book.
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