So many things can either attract you or dissuade you from picking up a book. The title, the cover, the blurbs. For me, this title was a real turnoff but I liked the description. I am always drawn to stories about Depression era artists.  I’m glad I didn’t let the misleading Hallmark type title turn me off.

The narrative alternates between Anna Dale, depression era artist and present day Morgan Christopher. This is common to many books written now and I rarely find it appealing. As soon as you become absorbed in one time frame, poof you’re in another century! And usually one storyline is far more interesting, or well researched, or more tightly written than the other.

I found this to be the case in this book as well.

The connection between the two is a mural that present day Morgan, is charged with restoring. It is highly damaged and must be restored for a gallery opening. It was painted by World War II era Anna after which she disappeared under mysterious circumstances..

Anna is a young artist. She entered a contest to paint a mural for her local post office in New Jersey. However, instead she was sent to a town she’d never heard of—Edenton, North Carolina—to paint their post office mural. 

She goes Edenton not long after the suicide of her manic depressive mother. Grieving and without direction, she needs a fresh start and fully embraces the challenge. She goes about immersing herself in rhythms of the town to fulfill the mission of creating a representative collage.

But she is from New Jersey and doesn’t know, much less understand, the culture of this southern town. She takes on a young, talented black artist, Jesse, as her assistant. As the story spins out, we know that Anna has disappeared but we don’t know how or why.

Switching to Morgan, she is in prison. She was with her boyfriend, Trey, driving drunk. He caused an accident in which a young girl was severely injured. Trey took off, leaving Morgan to take responsibility for the accident. Her dream of a life with Trey and becoming an artist is derailed as well as her confidence in the future.

One day, a visitor and her attorney come to the prison with an offer. She will be released and her sentence commuted if she restores the mural within an unreasonable time frame. In addition, if she completes the project, she will receive $50,000. Morgan cannot understand any of it. She doesn’t know the artist who has given her this chance and moreover, knows nothing about art restoration. But if it will get her out of jail, she’s determined to do it. 

When Morgan arrives in Edenton to start work, she finds a seriously damaged painting. It has scenes you might expect in this kind of mural but it is overlayed with inexplicable violence. She can’t imagine what happened to Anna Dale to paint such a mural. Will Morgan’s journey to finding herself somehow be influenced by finding out what happened to Anna?

As with any good plot, the turns in the narrative keep you guessing.

I found Anna’s chapters far more interesting than Morgan’s. There was more action as she becomes acquainted with the townspeople and starts to formulate what she will  include to represent the town. The characters are well drawn. Her landlady, Miss Myrtle, the daughter, Pauline, Martin, the artist whose entry was not selected, the various characters who run the town, and most of all Jesse. The chapters he was in jumped off the page.

Not so much with the Morgan chapters. She was sympathetic but there was too much repetition of her self doubt, her alcoholic past, her mind haunted by the girl they ruined in the accident.. Lisa, the woman who had her released from prison to meet an impossible deadline, was one note. She was too harsh, too impersonal, too repetitive. But on the flip side, her family members were intriguing. Of course, there needs to be a love interest and there he was, almost too good to be true.

What impressed me most about the book is how the past came alive. The mores, sensibility, and language was as alien to Anna as if she had traveled to a foreign country. So much of the vitriol seething beneath the surface should remind us of the large chasms in understanding each other. That is the beauty of historical fiction. It’s a reminder of how the past still haunts us now.

This is the first book I’ve read by Diane Chamberlain.  She has written twenty five others. Ms. Chamberlain has said that her books are hard to characterize. They run the gamut of historical, contemporary, suspense, and even time travel. She adds that whatever the story, they all focus on relationships. I’d recommend checking her out. I know I’m going to.