Pale Morning Light With Violet Swan: A Novel of a Life in Art

By Deborah Reed

The story of a famous abstract painter at the end of her life—her family, her art, and the long-buried secrets that won’t stay hidden for much longer.

Ninety-three-year-old Violet Swan has spent a lifetime translating tragedy and hardship into art, becoming famous for her abstract paintings, which evoke tranquility, innocence, and joy. For nearly a century Violet has lived a peaceful, private life of painting on the coast of Oregon. The “business of Violet” is run by her only child, Francisco, and his wife, Penny. But shortly before Violet's death, an earthquake sets a series of events in motion, and her deeply hidden past begins to resurface. When her beloved grandson returns home with a family secret in tow, Violet is forced to come to terms with the life she left behind so long ago—a life her family knows nothing about.

A generational saga set against the backdrop of twentieth-century America and into the present day, Pale Morning Light with Violet Swan is the story of a girl who escaped rural Georgia at fourteen during World War II, crossing the country alone and broke. It is the story of how that girl met the man who would become her devoted husband, how she became a celebrated artist, and above all, how her life, inspired by nothing more than the way she imagined it to be, would turn out to be her greatest masterpiece.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Release date: Oct 6, 2020
• ISBN: 9780544817418

Deborah Reed

DEBORAH REED is the author of the novels Pale Morning Light with Violet Swan, The Days When Birds Come Back,Olivay,Things We Set on Fire, and Carry Yourself Back to Me. She has written two thrillers under the pen name Audrey Braun. She lives on the coast of Oregon and is the owner of Cloud and Leaf, an independent bookstore in Manzanita, Oregon.

Reviews for Pale Morning Light With Violet Swan

[airycat_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Pale Morning Light with Violet Swan by Deborah Reed is mainly the story of the life of Violet Swan (a famous painter) during the last six months of her life, the past being her memory flashbacks. But it's also very much about her family--her son, daughter-in-law, and grandson and a bit about her late husband. There are also a couple of secondary characters of importance. I got to know all these people. Even minor characters felt real. The main POV is Violet, but the rest of her family each have some chapters from their point of view.What I love most about all these characters is the flawed reality of them. I know them in what, to me, is a surprisingly real way. The living people as if I'd actually met them, maybe as a close family friend, and those no longer living in the way we sort of know someone we never met, but had been often told about by someone we care about who did actually know and care about them. I didn't always agree or understand them, but those disagreements were not due to deficits in the writing. They were the same as the disagreements I have with anyone I know. We never actually know anyone 100%. Probably not even ourselves.This book is about love. It exudes love. It's not romantic, fairytale love, though there's a generous dollop of that. It's about an imperfect, yet real and abiding love of family and friends. By the end of the book that love was palpable.

[desiree_reads · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

While enjoying this novel, I couldn’t help but think of the elderly version of Rose in James Cameron’s Titanic, when she reveals that, “A woman’s heart is a deep ocean of secrets.” That perfectly explains our heroine in the Pale Morning Light with Violet Swan, a Novel of Life in Art.

An out-of-the-blue earthquake shakes up more than just the terra firma in this tale of family, long-buried secrets, and undying, though often unexpressed, familial love.

Violet, her son Frank, and daughter-in-law Penny are living a peaceful life of daily sameness on the peaceful Oregon coast when they are jostled into alertness and self-awareness. Sure, the house is a bit tossed on the inside – shelves fallen down, a bump on Frank’s head. But it is what is unfolding inside the hearts of the home’s inhabitants that moves this tale along.

That’s not to say that life has always been easy for the Swan family. Violet viciously misses her husband Richard, and so does her son Frank. Both Violet and her Penny are concerned about Frank, who seems caught up in a cycle of staring at his cell phone and testy moodiness. Then there is Violet’s grandson who lives in California, but who hasn’t been back home in years, despite the fierce closeness he and Violet share.

As the cast our characters thaw before our eyes, we also travel back in time with Violet as she tells the reader of her tale of how she came to live in coastal Oregon, the trials she met along the way, meeting the love of her life and Frank’s father Richard, and why she’ll never leave her coastal home. As Violet herself tells us, “The thing about time was that no matter how Violet had changed on the outside, on the inside she had remained every age she ever was.”

Then, too, as if the hauntingly beautiful landscape of coastal Oregon on which this story is cast isn’t enough, the tale is also painted along the way with Violet’s soul-stirring art.

Pale Morning Light with Violet Swan is a life-affirming read, if a bit slow-going and moody at times. If you’re a fan of stories with feisty older ladies such as Hazel Prior’s How the Penguins Saved Veronica or Danielle Steel’s Neighbors, then this might just be for you.

A big thank you to Deborah Reed, Mariner Books, and NetGalley for providing a free Advance Reader Copy in exchange for this honest review.

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[rosecityreader · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Reed's writing is lovely but not obtrusive. You can picture each character and scene, but she but lets the story do the heavy lifting. She packs a lot into the 302 pages of this rich family drama. Pale Morning Light with Violet Swan could have been twice as long and I would have enjoyed it twice as much – I didn't want it to end. This was the first book I read in 2021 and it may end up being my favorite book of the year.

[nancyadair-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

4.5If she told her family the truth, death would get on everything.~from Pale Morning Light with Violet Swan by Deborah ReedSecrets. Children who don't really know their parents. Parents who don't really know their children. Trauma, consciously forgotten or unspoken, eating their souls.Ninety-one-year-old Violet Swan's secret was not just the cancer killing her; guilt had dogged her life since a girl. A fire had killed her beloved father and sister. Evil men took advantage of the unprotected child. She escaped, a teenage vagabond crossing the country to the West Coast, pursuing a fragile dream of finding her place in the world.Violet became famous for her abstract paintings. She lived in her art studio tower, her loving husband Richard protecting her solitude and running her business.Their son Frank (Francisco, named for Francisco Goya) grew up imprisoned in himself, his silence smothering his marriage, his dutiful wife growing increasingly resentful. Their son Daniel had loved his Grand, Violet, but also felt his father's distance and had stayed away from home for years, living in LA as a filmmaker.An earthquake begins the story, a premonition of the changes that will shake their relationships nearly to the breaking point. Daniel returns home bearing a secret. Violet finally agrees to allow her grandson to make a film interview; she will spill her secrets at last.Deborah Reed saturates Pale Morning Light with Violet Swan with visual details, seen through an artist's eye. Music and literature enrich Violet's life.Violet's story is unravelled throughout the novel, lending an urgency to keep reading, like a mystery novel; we want to understand the intricacies of life experiences that have brought this family to crisis.I will warn that Violet's life includes trigger events. Violet is a survivor, a resilient woman. She finds salvation in the beauty of this world and in her art that endeavors to capture it.Frank is mired in anger, addicted to television news. "How on earth was a person supposed to live a normal life?" he wonders, in despair.Into their lives comes a small child and she changes everything and everyone.An ordinary happiness runs through me...This is everything beautiful, this is love. Are you listening? Do you hear?~from Pale Morning Light with Violet Swan by Deborah ReedI was very taken by this novel that glows under Reed's capable hands and beautiful writing.I was given access to a free ebook by the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.