Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Feb 2016
336 pages
Genre: Historical Fiction
Publication Information
Georgia O'Keeffe, her love affair with photographer Alfred Stieglitz, and her quest to become an independent artist come vividly to life in this sensual and exquisitely written novel, a dazzling departure into historical fiction by the acclaimed novelist Dawn Tripp.
This is not a love story. If it were, we would have the same story. But he has his, and I have mine.
In 1916, Georgia O'Keeffe is a young, unknown art teacher when she travels to New York to meet Stieglitz, the famed photographer and art dealer, who has discovered O'Keeffe's work and exhibits it in his gallery. Their connection is instantaneous. O'Keeffe is quickly drawn into Stieglitz's sophisticated world, becoming his mistress, protégé, and muse, as their attraction deepens into an intense and tempestuous relationship and his photographs of her, both clothed and nude, create a sensation.
Yet as her own creative force develops, Georgia begins to push back against what critics and others are saying about her and her art. And soon she must make difficult choices to live a life she believes in.
A breathtaking work of the imagination, Georgia is the story of a passionate young woman, her search for love and artistic freedom, the sacrifices she will face, and the bold vision that will make her a legend.
"Starred Review. American artist Georgia O'Keeffe blazes across the pages in Tripp's tour de force about this indomitable woman, whose life was both supported and stymied by the love of her life, photographer and art promoter Alfred Stieglitz... [Readers] will feel the passion that infused her work and love life that emboldened her canvases... The relationship between Stieglitz and O'Keeffe, and her metamorphosis from lover to wife to jilted partner, is poignantly drawn. Tripp has hit her stride here, bringing to life one of the most remarkable artists of the twentieth century with veracity, heart, and panache." - Publishers Weekly
"[A] powerful interpretation of [O'Keeffe's] personal growth throughout her relationship with Stieglitz. As vibrant and colorful as one would hope for a story about this beloved artist." - Booklist
"Tripp's writing is romantic, poetic, and flows as smoothly as her artist subject's brushstrokes in her famous floral studies." - Library Journal
"Complex and original ... Georgia conveys O'Keeffe's joys and disappointments, rendering both the woman and the artist with keenness and consideration." - The New York Times Book Review
"As magical and provocative as O'Keeffe's lush paintings of flowers that upended the art world in the 1920s .... [Dawn] Tripp inhabits Georgia's psyche so deeply that the reader can practically feel the paintbrush in hand as she creates her abstract paintings and New Mexico landscapes. ... Evocative from the first page to the last, Tripp's Georgia is a romantic yet realistic exploration of the sacrifices one of the foremost artists of the twentieth century made for love." - USA Today
"Sexually charged ... insightful ... Dawn Tripp humanizes an artist who is seen in biographies as more icon than woman. Her sensuous novel is as finely rendered as an O'Keeffe painting." - The Denver Post
"I devoured this dazzling novel about an American icon. Dawn Tripp brings Georgia O'Keeffe so fully to life on every page and, with great wisdom, examines the very nature of love, longing, femininity, and art." - J. Courtney Sullivan, New York Times bestselling author of Maine and The Engagements
"In this masterly novel, Dawn Tripp erases the boundary between writer and character, bringing O'Keefe's voice, essence, and vision to life. Georgia is a dazzling, brilliant work about the struggle between artist and woman, between self and the other, between love and the necessity to break free of it." - B. A. Shapiro, New York Times bestselling author of The Art Forger and The Muralist
"Georgia O'Keeffe's life became legendary even as she was living it, something she both invited and fought against. This is the fascinating tension at the heart of Dawn Tripp's novel - a book that, like O'Keeffe's paintings, is lush and rigorous, bold and subtle, sensual, cranky, deeply felt, and richly imagined." - Joan Wickersham, author of The News from Spain
This information about Georgia was first featured
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