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Gail Lukasik
Five Star / GALE, Cengage
Learning
June 6, 2012 / ISBN 978-1432825768
Contemporary Mystery / Historical content
Amazon
Reviewed
by Claudia VanLydegraf
I just finished reading The Lost Artist by Gail Lukasik,
and she did a bang up job for a Performance Artist cum Professor
of Writing and Literature. I definitely think this writer has many
more books to discover inside of her heart and mind. This book is
very interesting and challenging for the reader (makes one think
about the reality of the history we have crafted for ourselves),
but the reward at the end is well worth the effort to understand
what is happening throughout the novel. Lukasik takes you from the
present time back to the 1830's seamlessly and draws the reader
into the fabric of some items of history that have not been fully
explained or even theorized about much.
You have Rose Caffrey, ironically, a Performance Artist in Chicago,
who's big sister is involved in Academia and thinks that her little
sister Rose is a slacker and a do-nothing. Karen Caffrey, the big
sister, is now the proud owner of a house that is 175 years old
and in very bad repair, showing many years of neglect and misuse.
Karen is trying to restore the inside of the house and comes across
something of a mystery. One room is filled on all four walls with
murals, not just everyday murals, but well-done, thought-out murals
that depict some of the history of the old house. She has tried
a few places and entities to help her unravel it, but has not gotten
very far. Then she gets involved with a group of people that are
trying to bring back the history of the Trail of Tears and how it
went through the area back in the beginning of the colonization
of the Midwest including getting the Indians out of the area because
of their not being "civilized" and trying to get them
off of the land that has been traditionally theirs..... Information
about some of the uncovering's that has been done by a professional
restoration artist (Alex Hague) from Boston gets around to some
of the people who are wanting a bit of the pie, so to speak, even
though no one knows for sure just what that pie may be. Karen dies
on July 4th right after trying to run off a person who thinks he
has the rights to live in the house as long as he wants, after all
he is the son of the Braun family who has moved away and put the
house up for sale. Rose shows up a day or so later and finds her
sister crumpled up on the floor of her library in the old house,
evidently the victim of a fall from a ladder while trying to reach
some books high on the top shelf of the wall library. But, did she
fall off of that ladder as an accident or was she murdered?
Now it is up to Rose to see what was so important to her sister
that she died for it. What was Emily Lord Braun, the original owners
of the house, hiding in that room with all those murals? What secrets
were in the paintings and who was the artist? Could it really be
that Emily was one of the painters, and if so, who taught her to
paint in the first place? After all -- those parts of Emily's life
took place way back in 1830's and no one kept records then. There
is still one wall of the room left to uncover by removing about
12 layers of wallpaper and paint. What will the threat of unwrapping
the great secret be??? And how does the Trail of Tears fall into
the middle of it? Lukasik does great at wrapping the secrets into
the house and the surrounding area, and at keeping your attention
as she drives forth with the truth. Or is it supposition about a
horrible thing that happened during the settlement of America, and
all the while she might just be unlocking a great mystery that has
been haunting many people for some three hundred plus years. The
answers might change the actual course of America's history as we
know it.
Great book, Ms. Lukasik, The Lost Artist is a winner in my
estimation. I thoroughly enjoyed it and read it a very short time,
because I couldn't put it down.
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