Discover Well-Read Black Girl Books and the projects reshaping publishing →

Book Summary and Reviews of Georgia by Dawn Tripp

Georgia by Dawn Tripp

Georgia

A Novel of Georgia O'Keeffe

by Dawn Tripp

  • Critics' Consensus (2):
  • Readers' Rating (4):
  • Published:
  • Feb 2016, 336 pages
  • Rate this book

About this book

Book Summary

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.

Please be aware that this discussion guide will contain spoilers!
  1. Georgia O'Keeffe is a woman many people know of, but her life as a young woman in New York is a chapter that is less well known. How did your understanding of O'Keeffe and her art change as you were reading Georgia?
  2. O'Keeffe was a groundbreaking female artist at a time when the art world was dominated by men. O'Keeffe had to navigate this world – of male artists, male critics and gallery owners – to build a successful career without sacrificing her unique artistic vision and her sense of herself as a woman. Discuss some of the challenges O'Keeffe faces in Georgia. Discuss how those challenges as well as the risks she took – as a woman and as an artist – feel relevant to women today.
  3. Think about O'...
Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $60 for 12 months or $20 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Reviews

Media Reviews

"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 in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

Reader Reviews

Click here and be the first to review this book!

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $60 for 12 months or $20 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

More Information

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $60 for 12 months or $20 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Read-Alikes

Read-Alikes Full readalike results are for members only

If you liked Georgia, try these:

  • Minor Black Figures jacket

    Minor Black Figures

    by Brandon Taylor

    Published 2026

    About this book

    From the Booker Prize finalist and bestselling author: a perceptive novel about a gay Black painter navigating the worlds of art, desire, and creativity.

  • All Fours jacket

    All Fours

    by Miranda July

    Published 2025

    About this book

    The New York Times bestselling author returns with an irreverently sexy, tender, hilarious and surprising novel about a woman upending her life

  • Blue Ruin jacket

    Blue Ruin

    by Hari Kunzru

    Published 2025

    About this book

    From one of the sharpest voices in fiction today, a profound and enthralling novel about beauty and power, capital, art and those who devote their lives to creating it

We have 10 read-alikes for Georgia, but non-members are limited to three results. Join free to see the complete list of recommendations.
Search read-alikes
How we choose read-alikes

More Historical Fiction

Browse all Historical Fiction books

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $60 for 12 months or $20 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

BookBrowse Book Club

Book Jacket
A Pair of Aces
by Marie Benedict, Victoria Christopher Murray
Two women on opposite sides of the law team up to bring down gangster Lucky Luciano in this gripping novel.

Members Recommend

  • Book Jacket
    Somebody Worth Killing
    by Jessica Payne
    Meet Nadia Davis, loving mom, devoted wife, secret assassin… and she needs a babysitter.
  • Book Jacket
    Feast
    by Catherine Kurtz
    In 19th-century France, a girl with a magical taste becomes a duc’s poison taster amid nobility and danger.
  • Book Jacket
    The Reimagining of Thornwood House
    by Jaleigh Johnson
    A witch and her ward discover a magical walking house and find the true meaning of home.
  • Book Jacket
    The Jellyfish Problem
    by Tessa Yang
    A marine biologist rescues a Maine island menaced by a giant glowing jellyfish in this inventive debut.
  • Book Jacket
    Summer's Never Over
    by Darby Bozeman
    A woman revisits a Southern summer camp where a counselor's death may not have been an accident.
Who Said...

What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading, you wish the author that wrote it was a ...

Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!

Book
Trivia
  • Book Trivia

    Can you name the title?

    Test your book knowledge with our daily trivia challenge!

Wordplay

Solve this clue:

S the B

and be entered to win..

Your guide toexceptional          books

BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.