New from Kathy Kessler, writing as Kate Calder Klein

A chance encounter in a remote New Mexico village launches an aspiring writer and a reclusive painter into an uncommon friendship.

It begins with Kate following her writerly interest in Lucy’s return to art after a decades-long departure from it. She is drawn in by the painter’s traumatic past, her encounters with New Mexican gangsters, revelations of dark family secrets, and a complicated blood-bond with art. Before long, Kate finds herself on an unexpected journey of her own when Lucy asks her to write her memoir, the story of her fight to realize and live an artist’s life. But in seeking to find her voice and the transformative power of art, Kate discovers that silence could be her greatest adversary.

Purveyors of Light and Shadow: Two Artists Search for Meaning explores the processes through which we arrive at the stories we tell. It mines the negative space that surrounds our memories and personal identities and gives them shapes we can live with. Through Kate’s eyes, we witness the evolution of two artists as they learn to navigate the truths they must confront, and those they turn away from.