Christina Kline - A Piece of the World

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it, while at times based on historical figures, are the work of the author’s imagination.

The Borough Press

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

Published by HarperCollins Publishers 2017

Copyright © Christina Baker Kline 2017

Christina Baker Kline asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Cover design © HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2018

Cover illustration © Alan Dingman

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books

Source ISBN: 9780008220099

Ebook Edition © 2017 ISBN: 9780008220082

Version: 2018-02-19

‘A moving portrait of a woman in search of autonomy and purpose in her life’

Sunday Times Culture

‘A graceful, moving and powerful demonstration of what can happen when a fearless literary imagination combines with an inexhaustible curiosity about the past and the human heart: a feat of time travel, a bravura improvisation on the theme of art history, a wonderful story that seems to have been waiting, all this time, for Christina Baker Kline to come along and tell it’

MICHAEL CHABON, author of Moonglow

‘With remarkable precision and compassion, A Piece of the World transports us to a mid-century farmhouse on the coast of Maine. But just like the painting that inspired it, this novel is about so much more. It’s about the terrors and injustices of childhood, the aches of adulthood, the regrets of middle age. It’s a story about a woman trapped by family and duty and her own ailing body ... Christina Baker Kline has accomplished something grand’

NATHAN HILL, author of The Nix

‘Christina Baker Kline writes about home an dplace with wisdom and tenderness, but most of all she writes about Christina Olson with compassion, empathy and resounding admiration. This is an inspiring, haunting, powerful novel’

HELEN SEDGWICK, author of The Comet Seekers

‘An affecting and memorable novel... unexpected and bleakly beautiful world. I thought it explored the nature of art and inspiration in a fascinating way, whilst also posing profound questions about what endures and what proves transitory; about the roles we choose and those which are forced upon us’

MATTHEW PLAMPIN, author of Will & Tom

‘The novel evokes the sombre grace of those paintings in language as earnest and straightforward as Wyeth’s brush strokes’

New York Times Book Review

‘With delicate palette, stark images, subtle tones, nuances brushstrokes, and consummate craftsmanship, Christina Baker Kline has written this novel the way Andrew Wyeth painted the canvas. It is a masterpiece’

Historical Novel Society

‘Tender, tragic, A Piece of the World is a fascinating exploration of the life lived inside that house at the top of the hill’

LILY KING, author of Euphoria

‘A brilliantly imagined fictional memoir of the woman in the famed Wyeth painting ‘Christina’s World,’ so detailed, moving, and utterly transportive that I’ll never be able to look at the paining again without thinking of this book’

ERIK LARSON, author of Dead Wake

‘Painterly, sensuous, and sympathetic’

Kirkus Review

‘A pure, powerful story of suffering met with a fight. In fiction, in her quiet way, Christina triumphs – and so does this novel’

O Magazine

‘Insightful, evocative prose brings Christina’s singular perspective and indomitable spirit to life’

Publishers Weekly

‘With beautiful and stunning prose, the novel explores the sensitive and complex bond between artist and muse against the beauty of the rural American lanscape’

Daily Beast

‘Epic’

Cosmopolitan

‘In this beautifully observed fictional memoir, Kline uses Andrew Wyeth’s iconic paining Christina’s World as the taking-off point for a moving portrait of the artist’s real-life muse’

People

‘Brings to vivid life a little-known corner of history... Avoiding sentimental uplift, A Piece of the World offers unsparing insight into the real woman behind the painting’

USA Today

‘A gorgeous read’

Real Simple

For my father,

who showed me the world

‘There was a very strange connection. One of those odd collisions that happen. We were a little alike; I was an unhealthy child that was kept at home. So there was an unsaid feeling between us that was wonderful, an utter naturalness. We’d sit for hours and not say a word, and then she’d say something, and I’d answer her. A reporter once asked her what we talked about. She said, ‘Nothing foolish.”’

—Andrew Wyeth

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

Prologue

The Stranger at the Door

1939

1896–1900

My Letter to the World

1940

1900–1912

Waiting to Be Found

1942–1943

1913–1914

The Cameo Shell

1944–1946

1914–1917

What Promises I Make

1946

1917–1922

Thornback

1946–1947

1922–1938

Christina’s World

1948

Author’s Note

Acknowledgments

Artwork

Credits

About the Author

Also by Christina Baker Kline

About the Publisher

LATER HE TOLD ME HE’D BEEN AFRAID TO SHOW ME THE PAINTING. He thought I wouldn’t like the way he portrayed me: dragging myself across the field, fingers clutching dirt, my legs twisted behind. The arid moonscape of wheatgrass and timothy. That dilapidated house in the distance, looming up like a secret that won’t stay hidden. Faraway windows, opaque and unreadable. Ruts in the spiky grass made by an invisible vehicle, leading nowhere. Dishwater sky.

People think the painting is a portrait, but it isn’t. Not really. He wasn’t even in the field; he conjured it from a room in the house, an entirely different angle. He removed rocks and trees and outbuildings. The scale of the barn is wrong. And I am not that frail young thing, but a middle-aged spinster. It’s not my body, really, and maybe not even my head.

He did get one thing right: Sometimes a sanctuary, sometimes a prison, that house on the hill has always been my home. I’ve spent my life yearning toward it, wanting to escape it, paralyzed by its hold on me. (There are many ways to be crippled, I’ve learned over the years, many forms of paralysis.) My ancestors fled to Maine from Salem, but like anyone who tries to run away from the past, they brought it with them. Something inexorable seeds itself in the place of your origin. You can never escape the bonds of family history, no matter how far you travel. And the skeleton of a house can carry in its bones the marrow of all that came before.