" I suppose I did it because I wanted something to show for the thirty years longer than I had lived in my homeland that I had been here in America. Something that was properly appreciated, even if someone else got all the credit. "
Liu Qingwu doesn t set out to commit a crime. He only wants to sell a painting something more substantial than the Impressionist knockoffs he flogs to tourists outside New York s Metropolitan Museum of Art. But the lucrative commission he receives from a Chelsea art dealer is more complicated than he initially realizes. Liu has been hired to create not an homage to Andrew Cantrell s modernist masterpiece, "Elegy," but a forgery that will sell for millions.
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The painting will change the lives of everyone associated with it Liu, a Chinese immigrant still reeling from his wife s recent departure; Caroline, a gallery owner intent on saving her aunt s legacy; Molly, her perceptive assistant; and Harold, a Taiwanese businessman with an ethical dilemma on his hands. Weaving together their stories with that of Cantrell and the inspiration for his masterpiece, Wendy Lee s intricate, multilayered novel explores the unique fascination of great art and the lengths to which some are driven to create it and to possess it."