A saga inspired by the incredible but true story of the iconic Klimt painting.

Painted in Vienna in 1910, Gustav Klimt’s “Portrait of a Lady” was purchased by an anonymous collector in 1916, retouched by the master a year later, then stolen in 1997 before reappearing in the gardens of an Italian modern art museum in 2019.

No art experts, museum curators, or police investigators know the identity of the young woman in the painting, nor the mysteries that surround the turbulent history of her portrait.

From the streets of Vienna in 1900 to Texas in the 1980s, and from Manhattan during the Great Depression to contemporary Italy, de Peretti imagines the destiny of this young woman as well as that of her descendants, and creates a masterful fresco that intertwines family secrets, disappearances, and thwarted loves.

Camille de Peretti was born in Paris in 1980. Passionate about painting and literature, she has been writing since 2005 and is the author of eight novels.

Julie Satow is the author of The New York Times bestseller, When Women Ran Fifth Avenue: Glamour and Power at the Dawn of American Fashion, longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction, and named Best Book of 2024 by Amazon, the Financial Times, Cosmopolitan, Smithsonian, the New York Post, and Vogue. Her first book, The Plaza: The Secret Life of America’s Most Famous Hotel was a New York Times Editors’ Choice and an NPR Favorite Book of the Year.