The Pelton Papers

A richly imagined novel based on the life of artist Agnes Pelton, whose life tracks the early days of modernism in America. Born into a family ruined by scandal, Agnes becomes part of the lively New York art scene, finding early success in the famous Armory Show of 1913. Fame seems inevitable, but Agnes is burdened by shyness and instead retreats to a contemplative life, first to a Long Island windmill, and then to the California desert. Undefeated by her history—family ruination in the Beecher-Tilton scandal, a shrouded Brooklyn childhood, and a passionate attachment to another woman—she follows her muse to create more than a hundred luminous and deeply spiritual abstract paintings.

Genre: Historical

"Beautifully lucid, calm, and radiant, this lovely novel illuminates what it really means to shape a life around the making of art. To rise, having been disappointed. To rise, again and again." - Andrea Barrett

"In The Pelton Papers, the wonderfully gifted Mari Coates recreates in gorgeous detail both Agnes Pelton’s work and the life that led to that work. Reading these mesmerizing pages, I felt that I understood all over again the hardships and the joy of making art. From first to last, Pelton is on a journey of the soul and we, her lucky readers, are privileged to accompany her on that journey of darkness and radiance. A truly marvelous debut." - Margot Livesey

"A beautifully written imagining of the intimate world of artist Agnes Pelton, whose spirit and under-appreciated work Mari Coates brings back to life." - Peg Alford Pursell

"The Pelton Papers is an extraordinary book. Like its subject, Agnes Pelton, it avoids the obvious at every turn. I loved accompanying her through the first half of the twentieth century to her own visionary modernism as a painter. It’s the skill of this novel to make her life of contradictions?solitary, social, ignored, glorified?the quietly fabulous tale that it is." - Joan Silber