When I used to teach middle school and high school art, I loved introducing students to the works of the great artists, from Leonardo da Vinci to the Dutch masters Rembrandt and Vermeer, to Impressionists Monet and Renoir, to American painters Edward Hopper, Winslow Homer, and Georgia O’Keefe. And many more. 

I usually integrated those lessons into art projects as a way for students to explore  technique, design elements, or subject matter associated with a particular artist. 

So the novel The Lady with the Dark Hair by Erin Bartels appealed to me immediately. The protagonist Esther had once been an art history major at Hope College in Holland, Michigan, which is familiar landscape for me as a Michigan native. (Never mind that Hope College is a rival of my alma mater, Calvin.)

In Erin’s previous book, Everything is just Beginning, the protagonists are musicians. Erin is a musician and an artist herself so has plenty to draw on (pun intended) for creating her richly textured stories. 

You don’t have to be an art lover to enjoy this novel, but you will learn a bit of how an artist thinks, looks at the world, and tries to capture a vision in paint. The details about art, painting, and pigments enrich the story, making it more immersive, but not overwhelming. I found the information about identifying artists’s works and fakes fascinating. Even more of a thrill was spending a little time alongside 19th century women artists such as Mary Cassatt and Berthe Morisot! 

Previous posts featuring Erin:

• All That We Carried, June 7, 2022
• The Girl Who Could Breathe Underwater, July 5, 2022
• Everything is just Beginning, Mary 9, 2023

Blurb

Esther Markstrom and her artist mother have always been proud of their ancestor, painter Francisco Vella. They even run a small museum and gallery dedicated to raising awareness of his scandalously underappreciated work. But when Esther reconnects with her former art history professor, she finds her once-solid family history on shaky ground as questions arise about Vella’s greatest work–a portrait entitled The Lady with the Dark Hair.

In 1879, Catalan orphan-turned-fugitive Viviana Torrens has found sanctuary serving in the home of an aging artist in Southern France. It is in his studio that she meets Francisco Vella, a Gibraltarian merchant who sells artists’ pigments. When her past catches up to her, she is compelled to pose as Vella’s sister and join him on his travels or be deported back to Spain to stand trial. Along the way she will discover that the many parts she has been playing in order to hide her identity have far-reaching implications she never could have foreseen.

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My Thoughts

This dual timeline novel seamlessly takes us back and forth from Esther in a contemporary town in Michigan to Viviana in various European landscapes throughout the late 1800s. Both characters and settings are equally vivid, their timelines connected by an artist, Francisco Vella of Gibraltar. Though the particular situations were unfamiliar, each protagonist was relatable, full of dreams delayed by dismay and disappointments.

Esther struggles to keep up the museum/art gallery dedicated to her ancestor, Francisco Vella. As a previous art history major, Esther is proud of her connection to this little known artist. But her daily life is constrained by care for her unpredictable mentally ill mother, Lorena. Both mother and daughter inherited their ancestor’s artistic bent. I loved how their artistic endeavors brought meaning to them, especially to Lorena.  

In 1879, Francisco is a traveling merchant and minor painter from Gilbraltar. He sells artists’ pigments. Viviana Torrens is a fugitive finding respite in southern France in the home of an artist, where she meets Francisco. Viviana’s roles go from servant to subject-for-a-painting to fugitive-on-the-run again.

Back in present day, Esther’s world is disheveled even more when her former art professor visits and puts Vella’s painting, The Lady with the Dark hair, into question. That sends Esther on a literal and figurative journey, searching for answers. 

In particular, I appreciated the sensitive treatment of mental illness. Esther’s mother mom has schizophrenia, and the author effectively conveys the devastation of living with that harsh reality, how it impacts Esther daily and over time.

I was so involved with the characters and their plights that the ending seemed abrupt. In fact, I felt gypped that I’d missed out on a few things, as if random missing scenes had fallen out of my book. 

I also wanted to know what happened after the ending, but that is left up to the imagination. That longing is the result of reading an engaging story, leaving me wanting more.

Join me for some Q & A with Erin Bartels.

Questions regarding The Lady with the Dark Hair

What was your inspiration for writing this story? Do you have a personal connection to the setting or situation?

Erin: I’ve been interested in art, specifically drawing and painting, since I was a small child. I’ve painted as a hobby for years and years. So, I guess it was natural for me to combine my love of art with my love of writing.

I’m also very interested in the particular problems and restrictions faced by women in the arts in history, as well as the things we let restrict us today that perhaps don’t need to. Both the external rules placed upon us by our culture and the internal limitations we place on our lives, assuming that they aren’t something we can change. 

I wanted to explore what it would be like to have a small life with a lot of limits and then one day realize that those limits are not just arbitrary, they are self-imposed.

As for the setting, I set the story partly in the metro area I lived in for 18 years and partly in a country I’ve never been to (Gibraltar) but that I started getting interested in after reconnecting with an old professor of mine who is from Gibraltar. He was an incredible resource when it came to researching both the history of Gib and the present experience of it.

Did you consider other countries or decades for the historical timeline before settling on 1879 in France (to start with)? After choosing the time period, which historical parameters were imposed on you?

Erin: I knew from the start that I wanted to place the story in that time and place, specifically because of what was happening in the art world and in the business of pigment and paint production. And both of those things are closely related. 

As paint became more convenient and portable with the introduction of tin tubes and the introduction of less expensive synthetically produced colors, painting could move out of the studio and into plein air, which is what makes the Impressionist movement possible. 

That was a time of great change and very passionately held opinions, plus extreme restrictions on women’s lives, which was the right backdrop to tell this story.

How well did you know your main characters, Esther and Viviana, at the beginning of the novel, or did you get to know them as you wrote?

Erin: I knew Esther inside and out. Everything about her. Every decision she would make in any situation. Every regret she had. Every resentment. While her outward life doesn’t resemble mine, her inner life, her life of the mind, is very much derived from mine.

Viviana I had to get to know as we went along, largely because her life is so very different from mine. I had to slowly work her out as her backstory filled itself in.

Why did you decide to include a character with mental illness? What did you have to learn about that for this story?

Erin: As with many writing decisions, I don’t remember the moment I decided to have Lorena struggle with schizophrenia. It is quite possible that I had decided that Esther had a very small life that she was discontented with and then had to have a reason that she could not live a bigger, more expansive life. 

Why can’t she just do what she wants? Because she has to take care of someone else. And I didn’t want it to be a husband and kids.

Beyond reading about schizophrenia, I also had the opportunity to talk to a friend whose father struggles with schizophrenia and she was able to share with me some very specific experiences and feelings that the child of a schizophrenic parent has to deal with and mentally and emotionally process, which helped me write a real, sympathetic character that was not like the caricature you might encounter in movies.

What is the biggest challenge in writing a dual timeline story and how do you tackle it? You’ve written several dual timeline stories. Do you prefer them?

Erin: I do like writing dual timeline. I actually find it very natural. The present is the way it is because of the past, and I have always been deeply interested in the kind of cause-and-effect connections from history that reverberate today. So even my strictly contemporary stories that follow one timeline have strong connections to the past that affect the characters today.

When I write dual timeline stories, I always write the chapters in the order you will read them rather than writing out one time line and then another and then integrating them later. 

Because I want to communicate just how closely tied these characters and events are, even if they are separated by more than a century. I want it to ultimately feel like it is one story, because that’s how it feels to me.

How much did you know about European 19th century art before delving into this story? What’s the most unusual thing you had to research or do? Are you an artist yourself?

Erin: I had a decent bit of shallow knowledge of 19^th century European art before I started, and my interest in digging deeper was sparked by two books: The Secret Lives of Color by Kassia St. Clair and The Mirror and the Palate by Jennifer Higgie. I read both of those books just for fun, and they became springboards into a lot more research and a lot of fun visits to museums.

What I did not have to research, because I have firsthand experience myself, were the particulars about oil painting techniques. Though I did embark on a personal quest to learn how to paint portraits, which I had never attempted. So during the year I was writing The Lady with the Dark Hair I was also painting one self-portrait a month. It was a fun exercise, and I did create some really successful likenesses!

What’s next for you as an author?

Erin: After publishing six novels in six years (while also having a full-time job, losing a father and a father-in-law to cancer, moving to a new town, and renovating at the new house), I am deliberately slowing my pace. I am working on two projects right now, neither of which has a deadline, which feels glorious and decadent. 

One is historical/biographical fiction and the other is contemporary women’s fiction. I’m open to whatever the future holds, but I’m not pushing it. I want to focus on my family and myself and the life of the mind, which you don’t have time for when you’re also under contract for one book while editing the last book while promoting the book before that, etc.

I’m looking to retrieve writing as a relaxing and restorative exercise rather than as another anxiety-inducing demand on my time.

Wish me luck.

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Back to Laura . . . On a similar note . . . 

If you like small town stories or Southern fiction about family dynamics and secrets, you might enjoy my novel All That Is Hidden. Set near North Carolina’s Smoky Mountains in 1968, the story spotlights the bond of family and the connections of a tight-knit community. Northern exploitation threatens as a father’s hidden past catches up to him and tests family ties. Learn more and watch the trailer here.

All That Is Hidden awards:

• Winner of the Artisan Book Reviews Book Excellence Award
• Semifinalist in Serious Writer’s Book of the Decade contest

I invite you to join my monthly newsletter for writing updates, freebies, and giveaways. Sign up and I’ll send you a free gift: www.StandoutStoriesNewsletter.com

If you like historical fiction, you might enjoy my novel, A Hundred Magical Reasons. This story spotlights L. Frank Baum, author of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, his friendship with a young girl, and his impact through the decades. Set in Holland, Michigan, this dual timeline novel alternates between 1980 and the early 1900s. Read more and watch the book trailer here. The story won a novel contest last year and will be published by Scrivenings Press in January 2025!

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Erin Bartels Bio

Erin Bartels writes character-driven fiction for curious people. Her readers know to expect that each of her novels will tell a unique story about fallible characters so tangible that it’s hard to believe they are not real people. Whether urban, rural, or somewhere in between, her settings come alive with carefully crafted details that engage all the senses and transport the reader to a singular time and place. And her themes of reckoning with the past, improving the present, and looking with hope to the future leave her readers with a sense of peace and possibility.

Erin is the award-winning author of We Hope for Better Things, The Words between Us, All That We Carried, The Girl Who Could Breathe Under Water, Everything Is Just Beginning, and The Lady with the Dark Hair. A two-time Christy finalist and winner of two WFWA Star Awards and two Michigan Notable Book Awards, Erin has been a publishing professional for more than twenty years. After eighteen years in Michigan’s capital city, she now lives with her family in a charming small town surrounded by farm fields and pasturelands.

Readers can follow her through her Erin Bartels Writes Substack, while writers can get tips, advice, encouragement, and brainstorming exercises by subscribing to her Experimental Wolves Substack.

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Join me next time for a visit with author Liz Tolsma.

Meanwhile, have you read The Lady with the Dark Hair or any others by Erin Bartels? Are there any particular artists or art periods you enjoy? Answer in the comments below.

Ever reading,

Laura

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