Readers will be transported to the vibrant art scene of late nineteenth-century Paris in this richly textured portrait of the relationship between Mary Cassatt and her sister Lydia.

Beginning in the autumn of 1878, Lydia Cassatt Reading the Morning Paper dreams its way into the intimate world of Cassatt's older sibling. Told in the reflective, lyrical voice of Lydia, who is dying of Bright's disease, the novel opens a window onto the extraordinary age in which these sisters lived, painting its sweeping narrative canvas with fascinating real-life figures that include Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Edgar Degas, Cassatt's brilliant, subversive mentor.

Shaded with intimations of mortality, Lydia Cassatt Reading the Morning Paper explores the dueling natures of art and desire, memory and identity, and romantic and sexual love. It is a moving and revealing portrait of the free-spirited artist and the sister and model who lived—and died—with such courage, dignity, and grace.