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Nell Parker has a PhD in art history, a loving husband named Josh, and a bungalow in Madison, Wisconsin. But in secret, her heart is still reeling from the tragic loss of the one baby she and Josh have managed to conceive. Rather than pausing to grieve, she seeks out testing and fertility treatments, hiding the steep costs from her husband. Meanwhile, Josh urges Nell to apply for jobs so she can focus on something other than a baby that may never be.
Luckily, the Mansion Hill Artists' Colony needs a director. Nell is handed a set of keys to the lakeside mansion where the artists reside—and left to figure things out on her own. The young metal sculptor, Odin, keeps the other residents awake with his late-night welding projects. Annie, a dreadlocked granny, may be dealing drugs out of the basement "studio." And Paige, an art student from the university, experiments with new printing and design techniques in the third-floor turret, and leads a string of bad boyfriends upstairs when she stumbles home in the wee hours.
Despite all the drama, Nell finds something akin to a family among the members of this creative community. And when her attraction to Odin begins to heat up, Nell is forced to decide what will bring her greater joy—the inspired world she's built for herself, or the familiar but increasingly fragile one of her marriage.
"Memorable . . . a transportive, satisfying portrait of an artists' colony." —Publishers Weekly
"An eclectic mix of characters . . . Thoroughly satisfying, from the first page to the last." —Jessica Strawser, USA Today-bestselling author of The Last Caretaker
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
June 11, 2024 -
Formats
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Kindle Book
- ISBN: 9780062270382
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OverDrive Read
- ISBN: 9780062270382
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EPUB ebook
- ISBN: 9780062270382
- File size: 1479 KB
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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November 1, 2018
After a devastating miscarriage and years of failed fertility treatments have put untold stress on her marriage, Nell finds an intriguing career opportunity as the director of a small nonprofit in Madison, Wisconsin. The organization runs an artists' colony, and Nell soon discovers that her main task is keeping the three mercurial resident artists on track. As Nell figures out how little her PhD in art history prepared her for managing these very different personalities, she discovers the story of the institution's founder, Betsy Barrett, an eclectic woman whose nontraditional outlook informed her life's work. Gloss (Vintage, 2014) juxtaposes Madison's warm, quintessential Midwesternness and Nell's homey comforts to Betsy's globetrotting adventures and splices flashbacks of Betsy's life onto Nell's present-day challenges to highlight the similarities and strengths of both women. While Nell's life may not look the way she expected, Gloss shares her heartwarming journey of uncertainty, growth, and acceptance. Fans of Sarah Pekkanen and Deborah Carol Gang will appreciate the many personalities and purposes driving the novel forward.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)
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