Georgia

Georgia: A Novel of Georgia O'Keeffe 

by Dawn Tripp
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Dawn Tripp was at the NH Book Festival (which was awesome) talking about her new book on Jackie Kennedy. That one sounded really good, but this one was on the shelf at the public library so I decided to read it first. I am so glad I did because it was fabulous! I have had Laurie Lisle's biography of O'Keeffe on my owned-but-not-read shelf for years (maybe decades) and will definitely need to dig it out. 

When I saw her speak Tripp talked about how important it is to her to stick to the historic record in writing her fiction which made this novel even more interesting to me. 

Georgia O'Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz are the center of this story which begins when they met and takes us beyond his death. Along the way we discover how the artists felt about their own work, each other's work, and each other. I couldn't put this book down and I learned a lot. I am anxious to go back and revisit O'Keeffe's paintings now that I know more about why she painted what she did.

This is a novel full of great lines too. I'm not sure if they are Tripp's or O'Keeffe's, but either way they are memorable.

"A life is built of lies and magic, illusions bedded down with dreams. And in the end what haunts us most is the recollection of what we failed to see." (p. 15)

"There are those moments, always, looking back on a life when you can see the points--fully lit in hindsight, real or imagined--where the path split, where you could have made a different choice and the cost of the choice you made." (p. 173)

I am counting this book toward the Historical Fiction Reading challenge.