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The House Girl by Tara Conklin

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Also by Tara Conklin:

Community Board, April 2024
Paperback / e-Book
Community Board, April 2023
Hardcover / e-Book
The Last Romantics, February 2019
Hardcover / e-Book
The House Girl, March 2013
Hardcover / e-Book

THE HOUSE GIRL
By: Tara Conklin

William Morrow
March 2013
On Sale: March 12, 2013
384 pages
ISBN: 0062207393
EAN: 9780062207395
Kindle: B0089LODXW
Hardcover / e-Book
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Fiction Family Life

Two remarkable women, separated by more than a century, whose lives unexpectedly intertwine . . .

2004: Lina Sparrow is an ambitious young lawyer working on a historic class-action lawsuit seeking reparations for the descendants of American slaves.

1852: Josephine is a seventeen-year-old house slave who tends to the mistress of a Virginia tobacco farmÒ€”an aspiring artist named Lu Anne Bell.

It is through her father, renowned artist Oscar Sparrow, that Lina discovers a controversy rocking the art world: art historians now suspect that the revered paintings of Lu Anne Bell, an antebellum artist known for her humanizing portraits of the slaves who worked her Virginia tobacco farm, were actually the work of her house slave, Josephine.

A descendant of Josephine's would be the per-fect face for the lawsuitÒ€”if Lina can find one. But nothing is known about Josephine's fate following Lu Anne Bell's death in 1852. In piecing together Josephine's story, Lina embarks on a journey that will lead her to question her own life, including the full story of her mother's mysterious death twenty years before.

Alternating between antebellum Virginia and modern-day New York, this searing tale of art and history, love and secrets explores what it means to repair a wrong, and asks whether truth can be more important than justice.

Media Buzz

Weekend Edition Sunday - February 10, 2013