Painting the Message

The second novel by the author of one of the loudest global bestsellers of the last years, “The Orphan Train” (sadly, in Russia it got lost among other worthy books). A documentary-style novel about an astonishing woman who became a muse for the outstanding 20th-century artist Andrew Wyeth.

For Christina Olson, the world was limited to the boundaries of a family farm on a small town in Cushing, Maine. As a child, the girl developed a disease that, over the years, paralyzed the lower part of her body. Andrew Wyeth, who in time would become the greatest American painter of the century, rented a house near the Olson farm as a studio. When they met, Christina was already over forty, and Andrew was only 22. Christina became the artist’s muse and a source of inspiration.

The friendship between Christina and the great Andrew Wyeth lasted more than twenty years and gave the world dozens of paintings that Wyeth painted on the Olson farm. Christina herself—muse and guardian angel of Wyeth—found immortality in the painting “Christina’s World.” “The Painting of the World” is a literary understanding of this unique story.

In this novel, fact and fiction intertwine. At its core is the difficult fate of a woman who became tightly bound to the fate of one of the greatest artists of the twentieth century. “Christina’s World” is a simple yet piercing novel about the fragility of life and the power of art, about the burden and the blessing of a family history, and about how even the smallest corner of the world can become a world painting.