Belle Prokoff is the last of the famous generation of painters for whom art was a secular religion - worth any amount of struggle and sacrifice for its promise of redemption. She is also the widow of Clay Madden, who revolutionized American art, became a near-mythic figure, and died in a drunken car crash. Blunt, fierce, and scornful of the world's hypocrisy, Belle has passionately protected her husband's memory in the three decades since his death. She has also persevered with her painting while the denizens of the fashionable art scene fawn over her not for her own work but for the valuable Madden canvases she clings to as the last relic of her tormented marriage.Now, facing the prospect of her impending death, Belle is confronted with another kind of an unscrupulous biographer is snooping around in her past, working on a sensational book about Madden's life. Before her battle to silence him spirals out of control, she is forced to make her peace with people and events that have haunted her for decades.
