Pale Morning Light with Violet Swan
“A beautiful, shimmering, heart-lifting testament to the power of memory and love and art.” —Margaret Renkl, author of Late Migrations: A Natural History of Love and Loss
"Gorgeous, luminescent, and imbued with hope…be prepared to be spellbound." — Rene Denfeld, bestselling author of The Child Finder and The Butterfly Girl
"A poignant and evocative portrait of an artist who transforms loss into tenderness, brush stroke by brush stroke." — Apricot Irving, Oregon Book Award winner, and author of The Gospel of Trees
“Reed finely balances the cavalcade of revelations with a poised, multilayered portrait of a complex life.” —Booklist
The story of a world-renowned artist at the end of her life—and the long-buried secrets that she can’t keep hidden much longer.
Ninety-three-year-old Violet Swan has spent a lifetime translating tragedy and hardship into art, becoming famous for her abstract paintings, which evoke tranquility, innocence, and joy. For nearly a century Violet has lived a peaceful, private life of painting on the coast of Oregon. The “business of Violet” is run by her only child, Francisco, and his wife, Penny. But as Violet’s last days seem to be approaching, an earthquake sets a series of events in motion, and her deeply hidden past begins to resurface. When her beloved grandson returns home with a family secret in tow, Violet is forced to come to terms with the life she left behind so long ago—a life her family knows nothing about.
A generational saga set against the backdrop of twentieth-century America and into the present day, Pale Morning Light with Violet Swan is the story of a girl who escaped rural Georgia at fourteen during World War II, crossing the country alone and broke. It is the story of how that girl met the man who would become her devoted husband, how she became a celebrated artist, and above all, how the life she imagined into being would turn out to be her greatest masterpiece.