{"id":5819,"date":"2024-07-02T06:43:36","date_gmt":"2024-07-02T13:43:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=5819"},"modified":"2024-07-02T06:43:36","modified_gmt":"2024-07-02T13:43:36","slug":"kathryn-lasky-mortal-radiance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/kathryn-lasky-mortal-radiance\/","title":{"rendered":"Kathryn Lasky: Mortal Radiance"},"content":{"rendered":"

Georgia O’Keeffe #2<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>I truly enjoyed the first novel in this series, Light on Bone, <\/em>despite initial reservations about Georgia O\u2019Keeffe as a detective.\u00a0 Lasky ably uses O\u2019Keeffe\u2019s artistic skillset to solve the crimes presented to her, and I am always in favor of a sleuth using an actual skill they already possess.\u00a0 Set in and around Taos, New Mexico, Georgia in this instalment is staying at the home of Mabel Dodge Luhan<\/a>, an art patroness who maintained quite a salon.\u00a0 Georgia is in Taos for the funeral of D.H. Lawrence, whose body was disinterred by his wife five years after his death, cremated, and brought to Taos for interment on the grounds of a ranch<\/a> Mabel had gifted to the couple (in return, Mabel received the original manuscript of Sons and Lovers<\/em>).<\/p>\n

Lasky has fictionalized a possible O\u2019Keeffe role in the chapel where Lawrence was to be interred: she created the stained-glass windows. (If only!) It\u2019s perfectly believable, however, and it puts Georgia where she needs to be when the girlfriend of the glass artist creating the windows is found murdered in the chapel the day before the interment. Georgia is devastated, and when the young artist, Matteo, is quickly arrested, she\u2019s so sure she\u2019s innocent she gets to work trying to prove it.<\/p>\n

Georgia was married to Alfred Stieglitz<\/a> at the time of this novel (1935) but had fled to New Mexico when he began to have affairs.\u00a0 In this series, she\u2019s having her own affair with a sheriff, who in this novel is hot on the trail of Bugsy Seigel<\/a> and not as available to Georgia as she would have preferred.\u00a0 She\u2019s instead working with a genius 15-year-old who does much of the forensic work at the sheriff\u2019s department in town as the Sherriff and his deputy are often drunk, sleeping off the effects in jail cells.\u00a0 The 15-year-old, Jessie Yazzie, appears to be an expert on fingerprints, blood spatter, and crime scene investigation.\u00a0 It\u2019s Jessie who accompanies Georgia to the crime scene to begin the investigation.<\/p>\n

Georgia, though trying to prove Matteo\u2019s innocence, nevertheless is a guest at Mabel\u2019s home, and she is forced to attend cocktail hours with Mabel\u2019s guests, who include, in this novel, Wallis Simpson,<\/a> pre-abdication.\u00a0 The SIS (Special Intelligence Service) are sure there are some Nazi operators even in the American desert, and Wallis seems connected to them, so while she\u2019s being arrogant and selfish at cocktail hour, she\u2019s also being watched.<\/p>\n

The cases of Matteo, Wallis and the Nazis, and Bugsy Siegel are all connected.\u00a0 It\u2019s completely unclear how until toward the end of the novel, but it does come together beautifully.\u00a0 While Georgia and her lover seem to be operating on separate investigations, the things they do share with each other begin to add up.\u00a0 The true genius of this book, in my opinion, is using the way Georgia O\u2019Keeffe\u2019s brain works \u2013 the way she sees patterns and forms \u2013 and using that skill to help her solve the crime.\u00a0 Lasky also almost makes the reader feel that if we were to look at the moon or a flower in just the right way, we too, could view the world as O\u2019Keeffe did.\u00a0 Luckily, we all have her paintings to help us out.\u00a0 This is a charming and unexpected series. — Robin Agnew<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Georgia O’Keeffe #2 I truly enjoyed the first novel in this series, Light on Bone, despite initial reservations about Georgia O\u2019Keeffe as a detective.\u00a0 Lasky ably uses O\u2019Keeffe\u2019s artistic skillset to solve the crimes presented to her, and I am always in favor of a sleuth using an actual skill they already possess.\u00a0 Set in … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[1758,1011,1757,1276,486,1759],"class_list":["post-5819","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-georgia-okeeffe","tag-kathryn-lasky","tag-mortal-radiance","tag-robin-agnew","tag-severn-house","tag-taos-new-mexico"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5819","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5819"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5819\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5823,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5819\/revisions\/5823"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5819"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5819"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5819"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}