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Pale Morning Light With Violet Swan: A Novel of a Life in Art Kindle Edition
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 she has lived a peaceful, private life on the coast of Oregon. The “business of Violet” is run by her only child, Francisco, and his wife, Penny. But while death waits on the horizon for Violet, 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 moving 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.
“Reed finely balances the cavalcade of revelations with a poised, multilayered portrait of a complex life.” —Booklist
“Prepare to be spellbound.” —Rene Denfeld, author of TheChild Finder
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherMariner Books
- Publication dateOctober 6, 2020
- File size2.7 MB
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From the Publisher
Editorial Reviews
Review
"Gorgeous, luminescent, and imbued with hope, meet Violet Swan, ninety-three years old, and with a heck of a story to tell. Be prepared to be spellbound."
-- "Rene Denfeld, author of The Child Finder""Reed finely balances the cavalcade of revelations with a poised, multilayered portrait of a complex life."
-- "Booklist"About the Author
DEBORAH REED is the author of the novels Violet Swan, The Days When Birds Come Back, Olivay, Things We Set on Fire, and Carry Yourself Back to Me. She has written two thrillers under the pen name Audrey Braun. She lives on the coast of Oregon and is the owner of Cloud and Leaf, an independent bookstore in Manzanita, Oregon.
Andi Arndt is a professional voice actor, the winner of a 2017 Audie Award for Best Romance, and winner of two Earphones Awards.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
She stepped away, brush in hand, to the windows, where the air felt charged, expectant, in the way of spring. The wooden floor creaked and clunked beneath her clogs, perhaps loud enough to wake her son, Francisco, and his wife, Penny, downstairs, though in the forty years they'd lived beneath her, Violet had never asked about the noise, and didn't want to know. Speckles of pale ochre slipped from her brush to the dropcloth, and now to the fir floor. She was fond of the groaning planks, their bricolage of color and grooves running from one end of the loft to the other, crisscrossing from her work bench to the canvas, to her reading chair, kitchen sink, and bed, like a map chronicling her days.
She swiped her cheeks with the sleeve of her smock. The morning still held a promise like so many that had come before. The ides of March had arrived, and the Irish moss between the walkway stones was now a rich emerald green. At a distance, the soft shapes resembled parakeets nestled along the path.
Violet's emotions were tender as ever, humming close to the surface, her love for this world often seen through a swift convulsion of tears. But lately it felt as if the world was dismantling her into something puny and indecisive, and this was not how she imagined the end.
Ever since her diagnosis at the start of the year, the days felt squeezed and the nights stretched on, hours threaded with fragments of sleep and dreams that were fleeting and strange. Lungs full of spiders. Hands dissolving into dust. But this morning she woke to the gentle voice of her old friend Ada Dupré'Bonjour, sweet Vio-lette'as sharp as any memory that Violet had carried for decades. Ada's olive skin and freckled nose, her eyes the color of jade, lingered beyond the dream, her voice floated through the room: Dance with me, Vio-lette. Why don't we just dance?
Violet had jerked out of bed and gone straight into a coughing fit.
Her concentration was slipping. The base coat on her canvas was only half finished, and still she remained at the windows, distracted by the light, the yard, and the thick forest beyond the grass, the warm sun drawing heat from the trees, an orange gas rising. Periwinkle crocuses streamed the lawn like lightbulbs with golden filaments. Barn swallows flitted to and from phone wires, their steely-blue wings and mustard bellies flashing in the sun. The Oregon coast had finally thrown off its gray-sky cape and stepped into the fuller light of spring.
Violet coughed into a tissue from her pocket, catching rust-colored flecks against the white. She wiped her mouth, balled the tissue, tossed it into the wastebasket, and looked west through the opposite set of windows at the curved horizon where the sky met the ocean, blue against blue. The cool colors had a way of tempering the heat inside Violet's lungs.
She swiped her tears with the back of her hand and returned to the large canvas, braced on the wall by brass hooks. She painted vertical strokes in time with the music, and moments later, traces of ordinary happiness began to sift through.
The mottled scars on her right hand appeared shinier, richer, through wet eyes and morning light. At ninety-three years old, nearly all of her was mottled in swirls of pink and red and honey brown of parched skin, the discolorations no longer assigned to the scars that covered her right side, from shoulder to foot. Her body resembled the leaves of the variegated shrub near Francisco's work shed'which he hadn't been spending enough time in lately, always watching the evening news or staring at his phone instead of creating something new with his hands, and she would tell him this, even when''?
Something was happening.
Tin cans full of brushes and pencils began to rattle, skip across the work bench, and crash to the floor. Rulers, notebooks, and masking tape plunged into easels against the wall.
Violet's knees gave way beneath her. It seemed as if the house had come unmoored and was drifting out to sea. Walls trembled, floorboards heaved, and down she went, letting loose a throaty cry, a mercy me.
She was flat on her back when scenes from her past flickered like an old film crackling, in and out, in and out.
Product details
- ASIN : B07T1FX4QN
- Publisher : Mariner Books (October 6, 2020)
- Publication date : October 6, 2020
- Language : English
- File size : 2.7 MB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Not Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Print length : 328 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: #508,745 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #930 in Psychological Literary Fiction
- #2,852 in Women's Literary Fiction
- #2,857 in 20th Century Historical Fiction (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
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DEBORAH REED is the author of seven novels, most recently Pale Morning Light with Violet Swan, and The Days When Birds Come Back, both published with Mariner. She has taught novel writing at the Hellenic American University in Athens, Greece, the UCLA extension program in Los Angeles, and was previously the co-director of the Black Forest Writing Seminars at Albert-Ludwig University in Freiburg, Germany. Until June of 2022, she was the owner of Cloud & Leaf Bookstore in Manzanita, Oregon. She now lives in Berlin.
www.deborahreedwriter.com
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Customers find the story excellent, wonderful, and fascinating. They describe it as a good read with a palpable sense of place. Readers appreciate the beautiful writing style and soft domestic scenes.
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Customers enjoy the story's quality. They find it a wonderful tale of perseverance, talent, and family. The sense of place is palpable, and the author guides the reader through Violet's journey through her recollections. The story is deceptively simple until Violet reveals her secrets.
"...Violet’s story is deceptively simple until she, a private, even secretive person, reveals herself to Daniel when he makes a documentary of her life—..." Read more
"...Perhaps it can. An amazing and haunting story...." Read more
"...I liked the way the author guides the reader through Violet’s journey, through Violet’s own recollections as well as her narration of her life story..." Read more
"This is an amazing book, it took my breath away...." Read more
Customers enjoy the book. They find it an engaging read with a captivating story.
"...Perhaps it can. An amazing and haunting story...." Read more
"...Deborah Reed is an accomplished writer; her lyrical writing evokes not only scenes, but characters, places, and time periods with an astonishingly..." Read more
"This is an amazing book, it took my breath away...." Read more
"Best book I have read this year. Thoughtful and mysterious...." Read more
Customers appreciate the book's beauty. They find the beginning slowly moving, painting soft domestic scenes of an old woman contemplating.
"...her rejection, pain, and abuse into works of enormous vision and beauty, and survives in a tiny community in the Pacific Northwest...." Read more
"...It begins slowly, painting soft domestic scenes of an old woman who is a famous painter, contemplating her life and impending mortality...." Read more
"This is an amazing book, it took my breath away. Such hardship, and such beauty, but I think what really spoke to me was the relationships and the..." Read more
"...Deborah Reed describes both the characters and the Oregon coast with such beauty and skill that I felt like I was living in the book...." Read more
Reviews with images
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A Great Book Club Book!
Top reviews from the United States
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- Reviewed in the United States on June 3, 2021Violet Swan lives a peaceful life with her son and daughter-in-law in the little town of Nestucca Beach, on the Oregon coast, far from the fame she has earned as a celebrated abstract painter. At ninety-three years old, she still works every day, covering canvases with translucent colors held in place by ladders of repeated graphite lines. (Author Reed writes that she was inspired by minimalist Agnes Martin.) When an earthquake hits, long-buried memories—dormant as daffodils—of trials and travels shake loose and mingle with unresolved emotions. Violet’s son, Francisco, is full of rage, and her daughter-in-law, Penny, suffers from anxiety. On top of everything, Violet has lung cancer. She’s aware that “The screws of time [are] tightening.”
Then comes a jolt of a different kind. Violet’s grandson, Daniel, a filmmaker in Los Angeles, comes home for a long-overdue visit, bringing an unknown three-year-old girl with him—his daughter, Dani.
As someone who has taught and written about women’s art history, I made sure to read this book as soon as it was available. It didn’t occur to me until after I’d finished reading it that part of the story paralleled my own life. When I’d just turned five years old, my father put me on a plane in Los Angeles, and I ended up at my grandparent’s house in Manzanita, Oregon (the inspiration for the fictional Nestucca Beach.) Looking back, I can see how not just surprised, but delighted they were that I had come to live with them. My grandfather built a playhouse in the trees behind our house, and my grandmother helped me built driftwood forts on the beach. So many homes they created for me.
Similarly, everyone in Violet Swan’s family recalibrates around Dani; the family see the world anew, through the eyes of a child. Connections are rearranged as nimbly as light dancing across the ocean. Memories, anger, anxiety and fear abut and blend at their edges, like watercolors on paper or the streaks of color when the sun sets over the Pacific Ocean, “ultramarine on the horizon, a layer of peach above the sea.”
The sense of place in this story is palpable. From her window, Violet can see a giant cedar…nearly two hundred feet tall…forming a dark shelter of fragrant shade around its base. And the ocean, blue upon blue upon blue, though none like the other. The wet, green forests that come right down to the driftwood-strewn beach. Agates, elk, moss-covered Hemlocks, moss, sand dollars, seagulls and eagles, evoke the primordial northwest coastline.
Agnes Martin said “Art is the concrete representation of our most subtle feelings.” Reed’s writing is equally subtle. It isn’t easy to paint a picture with words, but with a touch as light as Violet Swan’s graphite lines, Reed conveys the ineffable. Here is Violet remembering one of her paintings:
"The painting now hung in a museum in Reykjavik, the translucent blue and Venetian-green palette of grids at home among Iceland’s rolling grasses and the grays and blues of fjords. For a moment, Violet was transported to waterfalls and lagoons."
I enjoyed the surprise cameo appearance of Lee Krasner. I’ve never come across anything suggesting that Krasner visited the Oregon coast, but how I would have loved to have a drink with her at the Neahkahnie Tavern! Violet’s New York agent, Betty Johnson, is surely a stand-in for gallery owner Martha Jackson. And Portland artist Mark Rothko is one of Violet’s influences. These mentions connect hermit Violet Swan with the post-war Abstract Expressionist movement.
Violet’s story is deceptively simple until she, a private, even secretive person, reveals herself to Daniel when he makes a documentary of her life—fire, molestation, a journey across the country, the loss of family and her dearest friend. Agnes Martin said that her paintings were not about what is seen…They are about what is known forever in the mind. Violet’s revelations build until they fill in the final brushstrokes, completing the picture of Violet’s life so that her family can at last understand the pain and love she’s carried forever in her mind, and what it took for her to create the life she wanted. Reconciliation, new love, and a new life provide a satisfying look at the complexity of an artist’s family in a small town.
- Reviewed in the United States on August 11, 2024Can tragedy evoke Beauty? Or Suffering bring you the Love of your life? Perhaps it can.
An amazing and haunting story. The words are incandescent, describing a young child, burned in a fire, facing life with a scarred body and hand; and an unquenchable passion for Color.
She transmutes her rejection, pain, and abuse into works of enormous vision and beauty, and survives in a tiny community in the Pacific Northwest. Violet sees the ocean and the sunrises and sunsets every day. And Meets the love of her life, after many amazing adventures.
I BINGE READ IT.
- Reviewed in the United States on September 12, 2021This was my first book from the @the.book.drop! Yes, I'm way behind in reading, but this was something I never would have picked out for myself, but I'm so glad I was able to read it.
Synopsis: This tells the story of Violet Swan, a 93-year-old reclusive artist, who is facing terminal cancer. She finally agrees to sit for a documentary her grandson is making, and reveals stories of her background and secrets she's kept from her entire family.
This wasn't always easy to read. It was a slow start, and took some time to get into the flow of the story. I loved the flashbacks though, and the fascinating things Violet went through to get to where she was. In part because of this, I didn't always love the parts of the story in the present, and sometimes (not always!) felt like I was trudging through those to get back to the flashbacks.
This had moments of true beauty, and I'm very glad I read it. I would definitely recommend to anyone who enjoys character-driven novels, and the trope of deathbed revelations.
- Reviewed in the United States on October 11, 2020Pale Morning Light with Violet Swan is an exquisitely written novel!
Deborah Reed is an accomplished writer; her lyrical writing evokes not only scenes, but characters, places, and time periods with an astonishingly incisive intensity. “The past had brushed so closely up against her.” “Recollections….driven underground, dormant as daffodils.” “Each second its own kingdom of time.”
I was also attracted to this book because of its subtitle: A Novel of a Life in Art,” since I love art and music. It begins slowly, painting soft domestic scenes of an old woman who is a famous painter, contemplating her life and impending mortality. As a reader, I felt enticed in gently to the thoughts and recollections of Violet. She is drawn as a character of quiet strength with undercurrents of strong emotion. Other characters, including her husband Richard, son Francisco, his wife Penny and their son Daniel are also fleshed out nicely as the author devotes chapters to their thoughts and reasons for their actions. We see how their lives and intentions intersect and collide with Violet’s life.
This story covers 93 years, as Violet grows up and migrates from Georgia across the US to Oregon. Some chapters are difficult to read, as this young girl from age 7 endures a tragic home event, is taken advantage of by unscrupulous adults and endures traumas as a single woman in America of the 1930s and 1940s. However, she is not powerless and learns her strength as she matures, marries and establishes a home and career in art. As she pondered, “sorrow had sometimes followed her around like a tired child…Asking to be lifted into her arms.”
I liked the way the author guides the reader through Violet’s journey, through Violet’s own recollections as well as her narration of her life story to her grandson Daniel. At the end of it all, I think this book is about family, weak and strong; about women and their inner fortitude; and about motherhood, and all that encompasses.
I highly recommend this book.
- Reviewed in the United States on June 14, 2024This is an amazing book, it took my breath away. Such hardship, and such beauty, but I think what really spoke to me was the relationships and the secrets, slowly revealed. You won't be disappointed.