After celebrated author Jasper Gwyn suddenly and publicly announces that
he will never write another book, he embarks on a strange new career
path as a ?copyist," holding thirty-day sittings in a meticulously
appointed room and producing, at the end, brief but profoundly rich
portraits in prose. The surprising, beautiful, and even frightening
results are received with rapture by their subjects?among them Gwyn's
devoted assistant, Rebecca; a beautiful fabric importer; a landscape
painter; Gwyn's own literary agent; two wealthy newlyweds; a tailor to
the Queen; and a very dangerous nineteen-year-old.
Then Gwyn disappears, leaving behind only a short note to his
assistant?and the portraits. As Rebecca studies his words, she realizes
that the mystery is larger than the simple fact of Gwyn's whereabouts,
and she begins to unravel a lifetime's worth of clues left by a man who
saw so much but said so little, a man whose solitude masked a heart as
hungry as hers.