The Muralist: A Novel

Don't miss B. A. Shapiro's new novel, Metropolis, coming May 17, 2022. "Vibrant and suspenseful . . . Like The Art Forger, this new story takes us into the heart of what it means to be an artist." -The Washington Post "B. A. Shapiro captivated us in 2012 with her 'addictive' novel The Art Forger. Now, she's back with another thrilling tale from the art world." -Entertainment Weekly When Alizée Benoit, an American painter working for the Works Progress Administration (WPA), vanishes in New York City in 1940, no one knows what happened to her. Not her Jewish family living in German-occupied France. Not her artistic patron and political compatriot, Eleanor Roosevelt. Not her close-knit group of friends, including Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock, and Lee Krasner. And, some seventy years later, not her great-niece, Danielle Abrams, who while working at Christie's auction house uncovers enigmatic paintings hidden behind works by those now-famous Abstract Expressionist artists. Do they hold answers to the questions surrounding her missing aunt? When a young Abstract Expressionist painter working for the Works Progress Administration (WPA) vanishes in pre-WWII New York City in 1940, neither her Jewish family living in German-occupied France nor her close-knit group of friends and fellow painters, including Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock, and Lee Krasner, knows what happened to her. B. A. Shapiro is the bestselling author of The Collector's Apprentice, The Muralist, and The Art Forger, which won the New England Book Award for Fiction and the Boston Authors Society Award for Fiction, among other honors. Her books have been selected as community reads in numerous cities and translated throughout the world. Before becoming a novelist, she taught sociology at Tufts University and creative writing at Northeastern University. She and her husband, Dan, divide their time between Boston and Florida. Hachette Speakers Bureau Featured Speaker This author is represented by the Hachette Speakers Bureau. To learn more, visit their Speaker's Page. Alizée painted at a makeshift desk, an overturned shipping crate with one side sawed off to accommodate her legs. According to the label, it once held uniforms for butchers; she hadn't known butchers wore uniforms. She worked in a warehouse that jutted into the Hudson River where eight different mural projects were being created side by side, and armies of artists clutching charcoal or brushes or marble pestles bustled through the yawning space. Two years ago, she'd returned to the States after seven years in France. Seven more than she would have chosen, but she'd learned early on that the vagaries of fate had far more power than she did. She was nineteen at the time and had been living for that moment, had done battle with her family, her friends, even her art teachers, to realize it. Nevertheless, at the first sight of Lady Liberty, she was swamped by a wrenching sadness and that odd sense of floating above her own head. From afar, she watched the shadows darken the space around her as she stood on the ship's deck, searching for people bustling with energy and opportunity, the ones she remembered and the ones she knew weren't there anymore. Obviously, the country was in the midst of a depression, and she'd thought she was prepared for this. But the mute shipyards bounded by weathered warehouses, their wide doors swung open to reveal their lack of wares, unsettled her. It was well into the morning of a working day, yet grimy men, newsboy hats cocked, sat on posts along empty piers, smoking cigarettes and watching the boat's arrival with no interest whatsoever. This was where the memories lived, and that would be difficult, but it was, she somehow knew, the only place her real life could begin. And she was right. Now, although the empty warehouses and grimy men were still perched on the New York City docks,