Product Description

The year is 1878. Paris is the centre of the art world, and in the heart of its thriving, vibrant community live two sisters, Mary and Lydia Cassatt. One is at the peak of her career, as the other reaches her moment of greatest frailty...Lydia Cassatt is dying of Bright's disease. Conscious of her approaching death, she contemplates the narrowing of her world with courage, openness and dignity. But for Mary, an independent, ambitious painter, life is unimaginable without her beloved sister. Torn apart by the idea of losing Lydia, Mary embarks on a series of five paintings. And as the emotional tension between the sisters rises, they become unable to avoid inevitable questions about love and passion, about life and death...Lyrical and tender, Lydia Cassatt Reading the Morning Paper is a profoundly moving, unsentimental and hugely life-affirming story of the immortality which both love and art can bestow.

About the Author

Harriet Scott Chessman has taught writing at Yale University and is on the faculty of the Bread Loaf School of English at Middlebury College. She has also written a book on Gertrude Stein, The Public is Invited to Dance, as well as essays on modern literature. Chessman lives with her family in the San Francisco Bay area.