The Gypsy Madonna

The acclaimed author of "Last Voyage of the Valentina" crafts a beguiling new novel about a lost masterpiece that sends a New York antiques dealer on a journey back into his childhood to solve the mystery of the painting--and his own troubled life.

"British author Montefiore (Last Voyage of the Valentina) offers up an uneven mix of family intrigue and international mystery in her latest. When Anouk, the ailing mother (and business partner) of Manhattan antiques dealer Mischa, donates The Gypsy Madonna, a previously unknown Titian painting, to the Met shortly before her death, Mischa is astonished; he never knew she owned the painting. After Mischa vows to discover how the artwork came into his mother's possession, the novel flashes back to his troubled childhood in postwar Bordeaux, France. He and Anouk are shunned by their fellow villagers, but after a charismatic American, Coyote, arrives and wins Anouk's and Mischa's hearts, the dashing stranger's celebrity-like status among the locals rubs off on Mischa and Anouk. The three, at Coyote's insistence, move to New Jersey, but after several years of playing house, Coyote disappears, and Mischa begins to run with a rough crowd. Graphic sex scenes add grit, but Mischa's coming-of-age mostly putters along until the book's concluding section, when Mischa's globe-trotting investigation into the truth about the painting lays bare a number of secrets. Unfortunately, the bulk of the book is an extended flashback that lacks narrative urgency." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

Santa Montefiore's novels have been translated into twenty languages and have sold more than three million copies in Europe.  She studied Spanish and Italian at Exeter University.  She lives in London with her husband, historian Simon Sebag Montefiore, and their two children.