From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the smash bestseller
Orphan Train, a stunning and atmospheric novel of friendship, passion,
and art, inspired by Andrew Wyeth's mysterious and iconic painting
Christina's World.
"Later he told me that he'd been afraid to show me the painting. He
thought I wouldn't like the way he portrayed me: dragging myself across
the field, fingers clutching dirt, my legs twisted behind. The arid
moonscape of wheatgrass and timothy. That dilapidated house in the
distance, looming up like a secret that won't stay hidden."
To Christina Olson, the entire world was her family's remote farm in the
small coastal town of Cushing, Maine. Born in the home her family had
lived in for generations, and increasingly incapacitated by illness,
Christina seemed destined for a small life. Instead, for more than
twenty years, she was host and inspiration for the artist Andrew Wyeth,
and became the subject of one of the best known American paintings of
the twentieth century.
As she did in her beloved smash bestseller Orphan Train, Christina
Baker Kline interweaves fact and fiction in a powerful novel that
illuminates a little-known part of America's history. Bringing into
focus the flesh-and-blood woman behind the portrait, she vividly
imagines the life of a woman with a complicated relationship to her
family and her past, and a special bond with one of our greatest modern
artists.
Told in evocative and lucid prose, A Piece of the World is a story
about the burdens and blessings of family history, and how artist and
muse can come together to forge a new and timeless legacy.
