Excerpt from The Flight Portfolio by Julie Orringer, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

What he ought to do, he thought as he kicked stones along the rutted road, was to write his wife that night to say he was coming home. He'd confess—and what a relief it would be—that his work wasn't going as planned. How had he imagined it would take a month, one month, to find and extract two hundred endangered artists? He'd envisioned himself riding a rented bicycle through the countryside, rounding up refugees by the dozen, as if they'd be waiting in the lemon orchards with traveling papers in hand. He'd imagined that the consulate would contort itself miraculously to help him. But then the chaos of this place, the innumerable bureaucratic barriers, the cre­tins in the U.S. Visa Office, the resistance of the artists themselves. What a mistake he'd made, crawling out from behind his desk at the publishing house. How could he have presumed to take the lives of men like Chagall and Ernst into his hands when he had no idea how to manage them—no idea, even, of how to convince them they were in danger? Eileen wanted him home; she feared for his life. Her letter from last week had made that clear. Well, home he'd go. He'd write her at once; he'd write her as soon as he reached the Splendide

Excerpted from The Flight Portfolio by Julie Orringer. Copyright © 2019 by Julie Orringer. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.