How do you find someone who wants to be lost?
Sisters Natalie and Alice Kessler were close, until adolescence wrenched them apart. Natalie is headstrong, manipulative, and beautiful; Alice is a dreamer who loves books and birds. During their family's summer holiday at the lake, Alice falls under the thrall of a struggling young painter, Thomas Bayber, in whom she finds a kindred spirit. Natalie, however, remains strangely unmoved, sitting for a family portrait with surprising indifference. But by the end of the summer, three lives are shattered.
Decades later, Bayber, now a reclusive, world-renowned artist, unveils a never before seen work: Kessler Sisters, a provocative painting depicting the young Thomas, Natalie, and Alice. Bayber asks art history professor Dennis Finch and eccentric young art authenticator Stephen Jameson to sell the painting for him. But that task becomes more complicated when the artist requires that they first locate Natalie and Alice, who seem to have vanished. Finch soon finds himself wondering why Thomas is suddenly so intent on resurrecting the past.
In The Gravity of Birds histories and memories refuse to stay buried; in the end only the excavation of the past will enable its survivors to love again.
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“The captivating prose of Tracy Guzeman’s first
novel instantly pulls you into the lives of the Kessler sisters, Alice and
Natalie, and their intertwined love story with Thomas Bayber, an attractive
young artist. Forty years later, as Bayber lies dying, he sends two trusted but
disparate colleagues to find a missing painting that the Kessler sisters
possess. Clandestine love affairs, painterly clues, and a world of untruths
come seamlessly together in this exceptional debut.”
—
Minneapolis Star Tribune