If she told her family the truth, death would get on everything.~from Pale Morning Light with Violet Swan by Deborah ReedSecrets. Children who don't really know their parents. Parents who don't really know their children. Trauma, consciously forgotten or unspoken, eating their souls.
Ninety-one-year-old Violet Swan's secret was not just the cancer killing her; guilt had dogged her life since a girl. A fire had killed her beloved father and sister. Evil men took advantage of the unprotected child. She escaped, a teenage vagabond crossing the country to the West Coast, pursuing a fragile dream of finding her place in the world.
Violet became famous for her abstract paintings. She lived in her art studio tower, her loving husband Richard protecting her solitude and running her business.
Their son Frank (Francisco, named for Francisco Goya) grew up imprisoned in himself, his silence smothering his marriage, his dutiful wife growing increasingly resentful. Their son Daniel had loved his Grand, Violet, but also felt his father's distance and had stayed away from home for years, living in LA as a filmmaker.
An earthquake begins the story, a premonition of the changes that will shake their relationships nearly to the breaking point. Daniel returns home bearing a secret. Violet finally agrees to allow her grandson to make a film interview; she will spill her secrets at last.
Deborah Reed saturates Pale Morning Light with Violet Swan with visual details, seen through an artist's eye. Music and literature enrich Violet's life.
Violet's story is unravelled throughout the novel, lending an urgency to keep reading, like a mystery novel; we want to understand the intricacies of life experiences that have brought this family to crisis.
I will warn that Violet's life includes trigger events. Violet is a survivor, a resilient woman. She finds salvation in the beauty of this world and in her art that endeavors to capture it.
Frank is mired in anger, addicted to television news. "How on earth was a person supposed to live a normal life?" he wonders, in despair.
Into their lives comes a small child and she changes everything and everyone.
An ordinary happiness runs through me...This is everything beautiful, this is love. Are you listening? Do you hear?~from Pale Morning Light with Violet Swan by Deborah Reed
I was very taken by this novel that glows under Reed's capable hands and beautiful writing.
I was given access to a free ebook by the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.
from the publisher:
The story of a famous abstract painter at the end of her life—her family, her art, and the long-buried secrets that won’t stay hidden for 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 shortly before Violet's death, 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 her life, inspired by nothing more than the way she imagined it to be, would turn out to be her greatest masterpiece.
Pale Morning Light with Violet Swan: A Novel of a Life in Art
By Deborah Reed
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Publication October 6, 2020
ISBN: 9780544817364
paperback and audiobook $15.99 (USD); $9.99 ebook
