Suzanne

Painted by the great men of Paris, a teenage model secretly teaches herself to paint, determined to step out of the frame even as poverty, motherhood and scandal conspire to push her back in.

Inspired by the life of Suzanne Valadon, Suzanne follows a young French woman through the studios, cafés and scandals of Belle Époque Paris as she moves from model and muse to artist in her own right.

Born into poverty and drawn into the orbit of painters, poets and performers, Suzanne learns by watching. While others paint her, she studies them: their technique, their ambition, and their assumptions about women and art. But talent is only part of the struggle. Motherhood, desire, reputation and survival all threaten to pull her back into the frame others have made for her.

A novel of art, ambition, motherhood and self-invention, Suzanne is historical fiction about the cost of becoming oneself.