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

By Deborah Reed

This novel of a family secret revealed as a famous painter nears the end of her life is a “heart-lifting testament to the power of memory and love and art” (Margaret Renkl, author of Late Migrations).

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 she has lived a peaceful, private life on the coast of Oregon. The “business of Violet” is run by her only child, Francisco, and his wife, Penny. But while death waits on the horizon for Violet, 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 moving 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.

“Reed finely balances the cavalcade of revelations with a poised, multilayered portrait of a complex life.” —Booklist 

“Prepare to be spellbound.” —Rene Denfeld, author of TheChild Finder

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• 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.

Book preview

Part One

1

Shortly after dawn, Le cygne drifted from the Telefunken radio, and Violet’s eyes grew moist at the rise and fall of the cello. She turned from her lamplit canvas to the windows, the sun radiating edgewise across the yard, the garden brightening with greens and golds. This too gave her heart a clench.

She stepped away, brush in hand, to the windows, where the air felt charged, expectant, in the way of spring. The wooden floor creaked and clunked beneath her clogs, perhaps loud enough to wake her son, Francisco, and his wife, Penny, downstairs, though in the forty years they’d lived beneath her, Violet had never asked about the noise, and didn’t want to know. Speckles of pale ochre slipped from her brush to the dropcloth, and now to the fir floor. She was fond of the groaning planks, their bricolage of color and grooves running from one end of the loft to the other, crisscrossing from her workbench to the canvas, to her reading chair, kitchen sink, and bed, like a map chronicling her days.

She swiped her cheeks with the sleeve of her smock. The morning still held a promise like so many that had come before. The ides of March had arrived, and the Irish moss between the walkway stones was now a rich emerald green. At a distance, the soft shapes resembled parakeets nestled along the path.

Violet’s emotions were tender as ever, humming close to the surface, her love for this world often seen through a swift convulsion of tears. But lately it felt as if the world was dismantling her into something puny and indecisive, and this was not how she imagined the end.

Ever since her diagnosis at the start of the year, the days felt squeezed and the nights stretched on, hours threaded with fragments of sleep and dreams that were fleeting and strange. Lungs full of spiders. Hands dissolving into dust. But this morning she woke to the gentle voice of her old friend Ada Dupré—​Bonjour, sweet Vio-lette—​as sharp as any memory that Violet had carried for decades. Ada’s olive skin and freckled nose, her eyes the color of jade, lingered beyond the dream: Dance with me, Vio-lette. Why don’t we just dance?

Violet had jerked out of bed and gone straight into a coughing fit.

Her concentration was slipping. The base coat on her canvas was only half finished, and still she remained at the windows, distracted by the light, the yard, and the thick forest beyond the grass, the warm sun drawing heat from the trees, an orange gas rising. Periwinkle crocuses streamed over the lawn like lightbulbs with golden filaments. Barn swallows flitted to and from phone wires, their steely-blue wings and mustard bellies flashing in the sun. The Oregon coast had finally thrown off its gray-sky cape and stepped into the fuller light of spring.

Violet coughed into a tissue from her pocket, catching rust-colored flecks against the white. She wiped her mouth, balled the tissue, tossed it into the wastebasket, and looked west through the opposite set of windows at the curved horizon where the sky met the ocean, blue against blue. The cool colors had a way of tempering the heat inside Violet’s lungs.

She swiped her tears with the back of her hand and returned to the large canvas, braced on the wall by brass hooks. She painted vertical strokes in time with the music, and moments later, traces of ordinary happiness began to sift through.

The scars on her right hand appeared shinier, richer, through wet eyes and morning light. At ninety-three years old, nearly all of her was mottled in swirls of pink and red and honey brown of parched skin, the discolorations no longer assigned to the scars that covered her right side, from shoulder to foot. Her body resembled the leaves of the variegated shrub near Francisco’s work shed—​which he hadn’t been spending enough time in lately, always watching the evening news or staring at his phone instead of creating something new with his hands, and she would tell him this, even when—​

Something was happening.

Tin cans full of brushes and pencils began to rattle, skip across the workbench, and crash to the floor. Rulers, notebooks, and masking tape plunged into easels against the wall.

Violet’s knees gave way beneath her. It seemed as if the house had come unmoored and was drifting out to sea. Walls trembled, floorboards heaved, and down she went, letting loose a throaty cry, a mercy me.

She was flat on her back when scenes from her past flickered like an old film crackling, in and out, in and out. Here was Richard reading her a poem, his voice so close she felt the heat of his breath on her cheek. ‘The world offers itself to your imagination,’ he whispered. "Richie," she said, but he was already gone, and in his place was a child. Seven-year-old Violet with her body set aflame.

She stumbled from the burning farmhouse with her mother, catching a breath in the snow while the blaze lit the night sky. Coughing, shaking the small birdcage clutched in her left hand—​her sister Em’s canary from Woolworth’s, warbling, whistling, alive. Wait till Em hears this song, she thought, looking down to see her charred skin thawing a circle at her feet. She was naked, her nightgown just a collar, singed and ringing her throat. The right side of her body had melted, and was hardening like wax in the cold.

In a flash Violet was fourteen, taller than her mother, standing beneath the canvas tent of a revival, the scent of moonflowers, and floodlights on every kind of person swooning across the dusty Georgia ground. Her mother dragged her by her scarred arm and delivered her to the Holy Joe onstage, who slapped Violet’s soft cheeks and hissed that she repent her wicked ways.

And then Violet tromping through rugged forests in a dress and oxford shoes, hungry, bitten, and scratching like the feral creature she had become.

Another clip and spin of the reel as Richard’s young face appeared on a front porch with the Pacific Ocean glinting at his back. Who are you? he asked. Why are you here?

I’m Violet Swan, she said. And you’ll know in just a minute.

2

The house settled abruptly. The Moonlight Sonata had taken over from Le cygne as if nothing had happened, even as Violet lay on the floor. She may have fainted. It seemed as if she’d been traveling for days and was relieved to find herself home.

Hanging plants swung like pendulums of asynchronous clocks above her head. Her paintbrush remained clutched in her hand, wide and heavy as a house painter’s, especially when wet. Her large plastic measuring cup full of paint had flung across the dropcloth, and the pale ochre coursed between folds of fabric near her head.

She struggled to sit up, swiping the brush across the floor and her smock and rolled-up blue jeans. She glanced around the loft for Em before realizing that Em couldn’t be in the house on the coast of Oregon where Violet had lived for the past seventy-five years. Em had never been here, or anywhere, since the fire. And yet the loss of her sister seared so deeply it was as if Violet had just received word. The left side of her body flushed with perspiration. The right, thickened by scars, remained cool and dry as ever.

The Emergency Alert System cut through the sonata on the radio. The tone was not a test. There’d been an earthquake, its epicenter fifteen miles inland. A 5.8 on the Richter scale. Well, heck, Violet said.

She’d never felt such a thing in her life. Her grandson, Daniel, worked as a film editor in Los Angeles, where earthquakes happened all the time. This was no way to live. She would tell him so the minute they spoke.

Her breath was thin, inadequate, her lungs tickled and pulled. The taste in her mouth was unpleasant, like the night of the fire when she’d stuck out her parched tongue to catch the icy snowflakes, but it was ash she’d caught, warm and chalky in her mouth. Maybe it hadn’t been snowing at all. Those days could be difficult to recall.

It was important not to rise too quickly, not to get ahead of herself by jumping up before her heart could hoist fresh blood to her head. It didn’t help that the past had brushed so closely up against her, and continued to billow like gauzy drapes around the room. Little Em with sweaty curls and big-eyed joy, the shimmer of a moth’s coated wings smeared on her palm.

The landline rang until voicemail shut it off, and after that Violet was surrounded by heavy quiet before the ringing began again. Her trembling hands had calmed, but a swaying within her continued for a time that couldn’t be measured. Neither Francisco nor Penny appeared to be on the way up to see about her. Violet pounded the handle of her paintbrush against the wooden floor, to let them know, she supposed, that she was all right, though it could be read either way. She heard Francisco through the vents, calling for Penny. Penny was yelling something indecipherable from the direction of the backyard.

Another wave of dizziness, and Violet closed her eyes and thought of rain collecting in the barrel for the garden during the driest days of the year. She was suddenly greedy for summer, for the sound of bees tip-tapping the windows, the feel of reading on the porch while the air smelled of lavender and brine, the evening sun glowing rubescent and gold. She had already lived longer than most people, longer than anyone she’d ever known, and for years it seemed as if she might live forever.

She opened her eyes to tiny fissures in the lath-and-plaster ceiling, minor cracks added to others from the house forever settling into the ridge. A chalky film dusted her lips, and she brushed and spit it away, coughing again as if some of it had slipped down her throat, though she was certain it hadn’t. The line Richard was reading came from a poem that was written long after his death. There was no sense to be made. He had been gone for twenty years and she was still here, and this had always seemed the most unlikely thing to have happened.

She unfurled herself bit by tender bit, floating upward to stand as if rising from the depths of a dream. She made her way around tin cans and photographs thrown from the shelves. The shattered glass distorted the faces of people she loved—​Richard, Ada, Francisco, Penny. But the one of Daniel as a boy at the beach was unbroken; the grin he still had to this day beamed up at her from the floor.

A tsunami watch was issued. The house stood high on the ridge, far above the danger zone, but the town of 571 people, with its bookstore, bakery, small grocery, tavern, and lumberyard, would be gone in an instant if a wall of water came ashore.

Violet dropped her brush into the sink and gripped the counter’s edge. From here she could see Penny through the window, wandering between alders in the backyard, her hands cupping her ears.

What in the devil? Violet said, and rubbed the light feeling in her forehead.

The chifforobe against the wall had rolled across the floor. Violet’s breath steadied, and she was clear-eyed, and the chifforobe, tall as Violet at six feet, had her attention. It was mahogany, and robust on tapered legs, with rusted metal wheels that still turned, as was plain by the way it had trundled at least a foot across the floor with the entirety of Violet’s clothes, along with the sweater Richard was wearing the day he died, all folded inside. There was something about the earthquake and her sister Em and the chifforobe that she couldn’t quite articulate. A triptych just beyond her reach.

If the world was asking Violet to pay closer attention than she’d already paid, the world was asking too much. She’d spent a lifetime navigating her observations. Back to her first pencil shavings and the scent of vanilla and sugar, her mother baking and teaching Violet to write her name. Violet yearned for her mother even as she stood two feet away in their kitchen, with its grasshopper-green tiles and Dutch-orange bread box, her mother’s sheer yellow hem shifting with the swish of her hips. Like this, she said, stretching her arms into a giant V, before offering Violet a slice of lemon cake. The composition of this life, its scale, shapes, and colors, gave way to interpretations that Violet didn’t always understand. She held tight to everything, even in the middle of having it. She missed her father while listening to him beg Dolly, their hairy mule, to plow, today, if it would please Your Highness. When the scent of straw and dust reached Violet through their kitchen windows, she could see and feel the lines of pale umber, chalky reds, and blues of her father’s and Dolly’s work across the earth and up into the sky, and its beauty confused her. She made drawings of forks and shoes and her mother’s apron before she could spell her own name, and sometimes when she saw what she had done, she was moved in ways she didn’t understand, and she hid in the back of the barn to let loose her gulping tears.

Violet crossed the loft and opened the door to the outside balcony. The air swept in, a mix of damp soil and sweet daphne at the foot of the stairs. Gulls cawed, chickadees zipped in and out of trees, and Violet felt all of life at once in her bones. The steps were slick with dew but sturdy.

It’s all right, she called out, but her voice was hoarse and broke in midsentence. She made her way across the spongy yard and finally embraced Penny, whose head barely reached Violet’s breasts and whose arms dangled at her sides as if she were walking in her sleep. Her blouse was damp with sweat, her copper hair a series of unwashed ringlets. Are you hurt, Penny?

Penny shook her head with a dull expression. The tips of her bangs clung to the freckles around her wet eyes.

Where’s Francisco? Violet asked.

Penny pulled loose and paced between the thin white alders, shaking her head at the ground. She had a thing about trees, and Violet shouldn’t be surprised to find her out here among them, but she was. Violet caught her when she looped back around, and she took hold of Penny’s shoulders the way her own mother had taken hold of hers, and she jostled Penny until their eyes met with recognition. "Where is he?"

Penny came alive, as if seeing Violet for the first time. She grabbed Violet’s hands and squeezed so hard that Violet pulled away. Oh, God. You’re all right, aren’t you? Penny gripped Violet’s shoulders and held her at arm’s length to look her over.

What about Francisco? Violet asked, and Penny, as if struck by a new realization, pointed toward the kitchen at the back of the house.

When Violet opened the back door, she was thinking the worst, though she’d heard her son’s voice moments ago. An ancient trembling inched through her body as she stepped toward shrieks from their old cat, Millicent.

The kitchen shelf, loose for too long, had busted from the wall, and each shelf collapsed onto the one below it until everything they’d contained had crashed to the floor. Dozens of spices gave rise to colorful plumes; brick reds and burnt oranges, like the dusty old roads of Georgia.

Francisco was sitting on the floor in the corner near the oven, his face covered in powdery spices and a slick sheen of blood from a gash in his forehead. He seemed to hear Violet stepping over the mess and held out his hand. Penny? he said.

It’s me, son.

He quieted and retrieved his hand. Violet told him he was all right, that it was going to be all right. She looked out at Penny, then back to her son, took the dishrag from the oven door handle, and dabbed the cut while he hissed. A sliver of white bone repeatedly shone through the skin. You’re going to need a few stitches. It’s not that bad. Just a few. Hold this tight against it.

Are you all right? he asked, holding the rag to his head.

Don’t worry about me.

An odd sensation that began this past winter came over her again, as if she were arriving at a familiar destination at the end of a long drive. Something brand new and familiar at once. Last month she’d felt it when a raven flew past the window, and she’d called out the time of day, the way her mother began to do after the fire—​a superstition to stave off sorrow. Violet had never done that before, even as it felt as if she had. The sensation returned the following week when she discovered that the fairy fort on the corner had been destroyed. The tiny village was a gathering of pinecone angels eating out of acorn bowls at a miniature driftwood table and chairs. At the center was a cubby house made of hemlock twigs. Toadstools and delicate ferns flourished in the shady little garden that had been there since her grandson Daniel was born thirty-five years ago. Fairies would congregate at that split knot of the giant fir, if fairies were real, and what did Violet know? Perhaps they were. They certainly could have been on that tiny corner of the world that her neighbor had maintained for decades, and coming upon its ruin was like coming upon a desecrated grave. Who would do such a thing? It appeared to have been crushed beneath a foot. Or bashed with the large volcanic rock that lay nearby. Violet had stared at the massacre as if she had seen it before, but of course she had not, so what was this feeling of living in more than one time and place at once? Maybe it was a lack of oxygen to her head. There were times when she felt a little drunk.

Francisco lifted his free hand and squinted at his wristwatch. His hair and shoulders were dappled in dry clouds of what appeared to be cinnamon and cayenne. He hissed again.

Violet sneezed twice in a row.

Bless you, Francisco whispered.

Are you hurt anywhere else? Violet asked.

There’s broken glass . . . be careful. No, I don’t think so. Just dizzy when I try to get up.

Violet retrieved a fresh cloth from the drawer and wiped the blood from her son’s face. He was slick as a newborn, his lashes thick and wet. Her hand trembled as she cleared his eyes to see. When Francisco was born, she was afraid to hold him. He was so quiet she thought he was dead, and she jostled him just to see his arms rise and fall on their own.

He glanced up, and Violet was certain he was about to cry. She hadn’t seen his tears since he was a young boy, and she reared back, wondering what to do. Among all the unexpected things of the morning, this seemed the most peculiar.

Millicent was a ball of orange without the spilled spices, but now she was dappled in streaks of tangerine and amber like a hybrid tiger, and she began howling from a slab of cherry wood near Francisco’s face. Whether it was a show of concern or a furious protest of the wreck she believed he had caused, Violet couldn’t say. Stop it, old girl. Violet clapped her hands. Go on, out of here.

Millicent bolted past the open door toward Penny.

Another wave came over Violet, and she blinked to free her eyes of the colors of the Grand Canyon—​scarlet bursts of fire as if the sun had melted upon the rocks. The landscape had resembled Violet’s scars—​ruddy, ridged, and cleft. Richard was telling her about the crimson- and caramel-colored map of the Grand Canyon that his parents had given him as a teenager. He’d fallen in love with the place long before he ever saw it because of that beautiful map, and perhaps this was why he’d so easily fallen in love with Violet, too. He was joking, of course, but the thought that his parents, who weren’t exactly pleased by Richard and Violet’s marriage, could have fated it into being with a map that resembled the right side of Violet’s body made them laugh.

Violet covered her mouth, but it was no use. She snorted and gripped her knees to keep from falling over. Shock had dissolved her constitution. Her emotions had broken down and built back up in too short a time. It was all peaking now with the full-body relief that her son was safe and alive. Even so, she regretted the laughter. It was the kind of thing that Francisco would find difficult to forgive.

What? Francisco said in between Violet’s laughter and cough, which was mild, and she thanked the heavens. He was looking at his phone, or trying to, blinking through the blood. Even now, he couldn’t seem to leave the gadget alone.

Violet finally calmed. The radio said it was a 5.8. And a watch has been issued for a tsunami, but there’s no warning. Is that what you’re looking to find out on that thing?

He scrolled his thumb up and down. There’s no WiFi.

The radio just said . . .

The landline in his office rang, stopped, and started again. A cell phone was going off somewhere in the house. Violet wiped her runny eyes and called for Penny, but Penny had her fists against her ears.

Maybe they could use some help. But whom should Violet call, and what exactly was she asking for? She and Penny could drive Francisco to the clinic themselves, and anyway, everyone in town would be dialing the volunteer fire department right about now, an outfit of four men and one woman who were surely dealing with their own families. Could be that whoever was calling was trying to offer a hand.

Wait right here, Violet said. Don’t get up just yet. She passed through the dining and living rooms. The walls had lost a small painting, and a portrait Richard had sketched of Francisco as a boy. Lamps on either side of the sofa had crashed to the floor, though the potted succulents in the windowsill remained in place. Violet lifted a broken frame containing a photograph of Richard and his brother, James. She carried it with her, and blew tiny shards of glass from the surface into the wastebasket in Francisco’s office. A wave of dizziness from dispensing too much breath passed through her, and from seeing Richard and James with their arms around each other—​young, happy, and alive. She placed the photograph on the desk with the intention of reframing it and hanging it upstairs, to help her remember and, perhaps, as a reminder to be brave.

3

Violet reached for the ringing phone on Francisco’s desk, glanced down to catch a breath, and noticed the receipt for her most recent painting, titled June. The painting now hung in a museum in Reykjavík, the translucent blue and venetian-green palette of grids at home among Iceland’s rolling grasses and the grays and blues of fjords. For a moment, Violet was transported to waterfalls and lagoons. And then she halted at the price, in bold.

Seeing the numbers had a way of sharpening her breath. She didn’t come from such sums of money, and still didn’t understand how so much had come to her.

She lifted the receiver, but couldn’t think of what to say.

The voice on the other end was her grandson Daniel, asking who was on the line.

Oh, honey, Violet said. We’ve had a bit of a rumble up here.

"Grand, he said. Finally."

Hi, little bear, she said.

What took you so long to answer? His voice was so much like Richard’s that Violet had to lower herself into the desk chair and get her head straight. The photograph of Richard lay beneath her hand.

Listen, she said. Getting knocked around like this . . . it’s no way to live.

It’s all over the news, he continued, as if he hadn’t heard. Are you all right? What took you so long? Were the phones out?

"This is no way to live. Violet glanced at fallen books and binders, tiny cracks in the wall, a mug of coffee broken on the wooden floor. A few things fell, she said. But it’s all right. We’re fine, sweetheart. The phones are working just fine." She pushed herself up and retrieved a white hand towel from the half bath across the hall, came back, and dropped it over the spilled coffee. The creamy-brown stain spread across the fabric like walnut ink on paper. She lowered herself back into the chair.

Hold on a second, Daniel said. There’s something else on the news . . . They’re saying, oh, it’s nothing, just that the tsunami watch is still in effect.

Well.

"It’s not a warning, Grand. It’s probably OK. But you need to . . . Can you get Dad? You should shut off the gas and water just in case something’s cracked. I don’t know about that soil on the ridge. It’s made from volcanic ash and clay. I have no idea if that matters with the foundation of the house. Can you get Dad? Is he already shutting stuff off ? Nobody’s hurt?"

Let me hop off here and we’ll take care of it. Let us call you back in a bit. We’re fine. We’re all just fine.

You don’t sound fine, he said.

Violet filled with emotion, as if his acknowledgment of her feelings was all it took to make them real. He didn’t sound fine either, and she couldn’t tell if it was the quake that had him upset, or something else, or both. It seemed like both. She hadn’t seen Daniel in over a year, none of them had, and lately he’d been calling less and less, cutting ties with his old life, and as much as Violet wished to respect his independence, she wanted to reach out and snatch him back against her. She loved him

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.

#PaleMorningLightWithVioletSwan
#ANovelOfLifeInArt
#DeborahReed
#MarinerBooks
#HoughtonMifflinHarcourt
#NetGalley

[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.