Van Gogh's Lover

 by Michael Hetzer

The story begins with a girl, who works in a library with her mother, learning that a painting of a nude woman that was owned by her grandmother, might be valuable.  The painting was given to her grandmother's husband by a woman he loved, prior to his marriage.  The woman left him the painting and said she was returning to Europe. The young woman, Jane, flies to Europe with the painting to try to get it authenticated.  However, she is drugged by the people she met and the painting is stolen.  This then sends her on a hunt around Switzerland to try to recover the painting and also find out why it was taken.  The other part of the story is of a relationship between Vincent Van Gogh and another psych patient named Sophie.  Vincent helps Sophie sell some jewels and arranges for her to escape the asylum and make her way to the US.  Her dream had been to see the western US.

Eventually Jane is hired to do some research on a family and finds some family paintings in which one person, a young woman, has been systematically painted out of all the paintings.

Eventually we find that a minister and a shady art dealer family have been routinely selling paintings by an artist they call Firth.  As the book ends Jane and her new love find a stash of paintings under the house she is living in, she has found "proof" in letters written between Sophie and Van Gogh that seem to indicate that Van Gogh did not die when it is said he did but rather he moved to Switzerland to live with Sophie.  He supposedly served as the local minister and painted on the side.The art that is being sold is his.  The crooks are caught by the police.

In the end Sophie is bequeathed the house to be its guardian, she marries the man she met in Switzerland.

I found the book a bit slow going and the whole premise a bit hard to believe, Van Gogh's work is so distinctive I can't believe it could be passed off as another artist.  I feel the author was just trying to sell books because of the popularity of Van Gogh,  Very disappointing.  Reviewers and other readers don't agree with me, giving the book 4 of 5 stars...