This
is the second book I have read by Christina Baker Kline; the first was Orphan Train, which I absolutely loved.
After that runaway bestseller, Baker Kline was in search of her next project.
According to the author, “As with Orphan
Train, I liked the idea of taking a real historical moment of some
significance and, blending fiction and nonfiction, filling in the details,
illuminating a story that has been unnoticed or obscured…a writer friend that
she’d seen the painting at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and thought of
me. I instantly knew I’d found my subject.”
The
painting the author refers to is Andrew Wyeth’s Christina’s World, and Baker Kline chose the woman in the picture,
Christina Olson, as her subject. She spent two year researching Christina,
Wyeth, and life in rural Maine in the late 1930s to late 1940s. There is a
comprehensive summary of what she learned about the Olson family in the
Author’s Notes that is fascinating reading.
The
subject of this book is Christina Olson. A woman with a disability who could
barely get around. And on top of that, there was no running water or
electricity in their rural Maine home. My heart broke for Christina, her life
was so hard, yet her resilience is amazing.
The
Andrew Wyeth showed up on her doorstep and wanted to paint the surrounding
countryside. I can’t say that the two drew close, I never got that impression,
but Wyeth accepted her for her. Eventually he paints a picture of the house,
the barn, and the waving grasslands, adds Christina in the foreground and calls
it Christina’s World.
One
of the things that the author does that confuses me is the jumping around. The
novel opens in 1939, then it jumps to the late 1800s into 1900, then 1940, then
1911-12 so on. I’m not sure that the story couldn’t have been told
chronologically, but it is what it is. I had hoped to give it 6 stars like Orphan Train, but the jumping around
forces me to give A Piece of the World 5
out of 5 stars in Julie’s world.
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