Cooking for Picasso

by Camille Aubray

The title of this book captured my attention.  It is about a young girl who is sent to prepare lunch for Picasso (who is in hiding as Mr. Ruiz) in Antibes in the mid 1930's.  She is a precocious girl who goes from quietly preparing and serving his lunches to being a model for some paintings and eventually having an affair with him and getting pregnant.

The story switches from the past with Odine to the present when her granddaughter learns from her mother that the Grandmother claims to have been given a painting by Picasso.

The granddaughter, Celine is going through a rough time, her mother (Odine's daughter) married an abusive man who had twins from a previous marriage.  The stepfather is hard on Celine and her mother.  He is a very angry controlling man.  When he dies the twins take control of his estate and move their stepmother from New York to Nevada to be near one of them.  They keep Celine entirely out of the picture.  One time Celine's mother gives her a book which turns out to be a notebook where Odine wrote down recipes and notes for what she prepared for Picasso.  Celine's mother has a stroke and her siblings try to keep her away from her mother.

Celine discovers that her mother had plans to travel to France to take a cooking class with Celine's stepfather's sister.  She is much nicer than he is.  Celine and the aunt decide to change the mother's ticket and have Celine go instead so that she can search out her grandmother's history and search for the painting.

As the story goes on we learn that Odine was promised to a local man but married the love of her life and they moved to the U.S. where they set up a successful restaurant on the east coast.  However the mafia are demanding payments and there is an altercation and Celine's adopted father is killed.  Her mother is frightened and takes them back to France where they learn that Odine's parents have both died.  They struggle but eventually Odine is able to convince the owner of her parents former restaurant to take her on as a cook.  She helps him build up the business to include a small hotel/b and b??

The story goes on to describe how Odine is able to get the painting by Picasso by stealing it from him
Eventually Celine, with the help of the current owner of her Grandmother's hotel,  finds the painting and though she would like to keep it she decides to sell it to become partners with the chef who owns her  grandmother's hotel and also fund a legal case to free her mother from her siblings control. Sadly her mother dies before she can achieve this.

I picked this book up on a whim and wasn't expecting too much but it actually was an engaging read with lots of details and mystery.