Well researched and beautifully written, the book held my interest from start to finish. Fiona Davis created a fictionalized story around real-life events and locations. Both women were at the mercy of the men in their lives, but both persevered in spite of them. Virginia, in the 1970s, hit many of the same roadblocks Clara came up against in the 1920s and 30s, demonstrating how not much had changed in the way of gender inequality. Her life was riddled with lost loves, prejudice and fleeting moments of bliss.

Clara Darden was an artist who worked at the Grand Central School of Art, a prominent commercial illustrator and a painter unrecognized for her talent due to her gender. Equally compelling her was her need to fight for Grand Central Terminal to be saved and retain its landmark status. Virginia was desperate to learn the history of the painting and the artist behind it. While exploring, she made an unexpected discovery in an abandoned area within the landmark-a hidden painting. After a mastectomy and a divorce that followed, Virginia Clay finds employment at the information booth in Grand Central Terminal. The Masterpiece by Fiona Davis is a historical novel set in New York City from the 1920s to the 1970s and encompasses separate, but connected stories of two women fighting through unfairness and injustice in order to find their power and sense of pride. She embarks on a quest to find the artist of the unsigned masterpiece - an impassioned chase that draws Virginia not only into the battle to save Grand Central but deep into the mystery of Clara Darden, the famed 1920s illustrator who disappeared from history in 1931. But when Virginia stumbles upon an abandoned art school within the terminal and discovers a striking watercolor, her eyes are opened to the elegance beneath the decay. Recently divorced, she has just accepted a job in the information booth in order to support herself and her college-age daughter, Ruby. Dilapidated and dangerous, Grand Central is at the center of a fierce lawsuit: Is the once-grand building a landmark to be preserved, or a cancer to be demolished? For Virginia, it is simply her last resort. But she and her bohemian friends have no idea that they'll soon be blindsided by the looming Great Depression.and that even poverty and hunger will do little to prepare Clara for the greater tragedy yet to come.īy 1974, the terminal has declined almost as sharply as Virginia Clay's life. Though not even the prestige of the school can override the public's disdain for a 'woman artist', fiery Clara is single-minded in her quest to achieve every creative success - even while juggling the affections of two very different men. It is 1928, and Clara is teaching at the lauded Grand Central School of Art. For Clara, the terminal is the stepping stone to her future.

But for Clara Darden and Virginia Clay, it represents something quite different. In this latest captivating novel, New York Times best-selling author Fiona Davis takes listeners into the glamorous lost art school within Grand Central Terminal, where two very different women, 50 years apart, strive to make their mark on a world set against them.įor most New Yorkers, Grand Central Terminal is a crown jewel, a masterpiece of design.

The lost masterpiece book