|summary=The complicated relationship between Edgar Degas and Mary Cassatt forms the basis for this well-researched novel's vivid illumination of Impressionist-era Paris.
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Mary Cassatt was an anomaly among the Impressionists: she was one of very few women, and also the only American-born member. A Philadelphia native, she made Paris home for nearly five decades. Oliveira's novel opens in 1926, with Cassatt (now nearly blind) searching for the letters Edgar Degas wrote her in the 1870s-80s. Degas and Cassatt had been subjects of Parisian gossip; no one knew for sure whether their friendship shaded into romance. Even Mary herself seems confused about what they meant to each other; 'she still didn't understand…whether there was room for love in two lives already consumed by passion of another sort.