From SimonandShuster.comCleveland-area author C laire McMillan will be at the library to discuss her new title \;< em>Alchemy of a Blackbird. Claire is the author of \;The Gild ed Age (2012) and \;The Necklace (2017). \; She was also Cuyahoga County Public Library's William N. Skirball Writers' Center Writer-in-Reside nce 2017-18.
\nFrom SimonandShuster.com
For fans of&nbs p\;The Age of Light \;and \;Z\, a mystical\, his torical novel based on the true story of the \;20th-century \;pain ters and occultists Remedios Varo and Leonora Carrington\, each beginning as the muse of a famous lover and then breaking away to become an icon in her own right through a powerful friendship that springs from their connec tion to the tarot.
\nDesperate to escape the Nazis\, painter Remedio s Varo and her lover\, poet Benjamin Peret\, flee Paris for Villa Air Bel\ , a safe house for artists on the Riviera. Along with Max Ernst\, Peggy Gu ggenheim\, and others\, the two anxiously wait for exit papers. As the mon ths pass\, Remedios begins to sense that the others don&rsquo\;t see her a s a fellow artist\; they have cast her in the stifling role of a surrealis t ideal: the beautiful innocent. She finds refuge in a mysterious bookshop \, where she stumbles into a world of occult learning and intensifies an e soteric practice in the tarot that helps her light the bright fire of her creative genius.
\nWhen travel documents come through\, Remedios and Benjamin flee to Mexico where she is reunited with friend and fellow pain ter Leonora Carrington. Together\, the women tap into their creativity\, s take their independence\, and each find their true loves. But it is the ta rot that enables them to access the transcendent that lies on the other si de of consciousness\, to become the truest Surrealists of all.
\nFro m an author with &ldquo\;an enchanting\, intoxicating voice&rdquo\; (Crist ina Alger\, author of \;The Darlings)\, \;Alchemy of a Blackbird \;is about a dynamic female friendship that became a historic artistic collaboration between two giants of the art world.
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