Purchase

Amazon

Kindle

Barnes & Noble

Kobo

Apple Books

Google Play

Powell's Books

Books-A-Million

Indie BookShop

Ripped Bodice

Add to Wish List

Also by Elise Hooper:

The Library of Lost Dollhouses, April 2025
Paperback
Angels of the Pacific, March 2022
Hardcover / e-Book / audiobook
Fast Girls, July 2020
Paperback / e-Book / audiobook
Learning to See, February 2019
Paperback / e-Book
The Other Alcott, September 2017
Paperback / e-Book

Learning to See
Elise Hooper

A Novel of Dorothea Lange, the Woman Who Revealed the Real America

William Morrow Paperbacks
February 2019
On Sale: January 22, 2019
384 pages
ISBN: 0062686534
EAN: 9780062686534
Kindle: B07H5BJK9M
Paperback / e-Book
Add to Wish List

Women's Fiction Historical | Historical

In this amazing new novel by the author of The Other Alcott, we see the world of Dorothea Lange, creator of the most iconic photographs of twentieth-century America, wife, mother, lover, and truth teller.

In 1918, twenty-two-year-old Dorothea Nutzhorn arrives in bohemian San Francisco determined to forge her way on her own terms. Within a year and a half, she’s renamed herself Dorothea Lange and is the toast of the Bay Area as the owner of the city’s most prestigious and stylish portrait studio and wife of the talented but volatile painter, Maynard Dixon.

By the early 1930s, as America’s economy collapses and her marriage founders, she must find a way to support her two young sons single-handedly. Determined to find humanity in places where most chose to look the other way, she takes to the road and exposes the horrific conditions of America’s poor. When the nation enters the Second World War, Dorothea must confront another injustice and decide how far she’s willing to fight. At a time when women are supposed to keep home fires burning, Dorothea dares be different, but her choices will come with a steep price.

Set amidst the turmoil of the Great Depression and the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II, Learning to See follows the life of an ambitious woman and her awakening to art, activism, and what it means to risk everything for love.

Comments

1 comment posted.

Re: Learning to See

Thanks, I have learned about Dorothea Lange in my photography class her in Dublin. Her 'Migrant Mother' was shown as one of the most iconic photos of all time. I will look out for this book.
(Clare O'Beara 4:55am January 16, 2019)