The Pelton Papers - by Mari Coates (Paperback)

About the Book

"It is 1961 and the artist Agnes Pelton, nearly eighty, is close to death. Surrounded by a few of her cherished paintings and the boxes that contain her memorabilia--her papers--she pours out her story and shares her secrets at last. Born into a family ruined by the famous Beecher-Tilton scandal, Agnes's life is complicated by poor health and intense shyness as she grows up with her mother and grandmother in a darkly draped Brooklyn house. Always artistic, Agnes finds her escape at the Pratt Institute, studying with Arthur Wesley Dow, and from there embarks on a lifelong quest to develop her own style of abstract art. Success comes early when she exhibits in the famous Armory Show of 1913, after which she is befriended by Mabel Dodge and mentored by another Manhattan socialite with whom she falls into unrequited love. She suffers defeats and heartbreak, travels to Italy, New Mexico, Hawaii, and California, and finally arrives in the desert town of Cathedral City, near Palm Springs. Here she settles into a sheltered and contemplative life, painting the vivid abstracts that are her joy and her reason for being"--Provided by publisher.

Book Synopsis

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.

Review Quotes

2020 IPPY Awards Bronze Winner in Historical Fiction

"Coates' thoroughly researched novel . . . succeeds beautifully at recreating the emotional life of this once-obscure artist, whose legacy has lately become the subject of renewed interest. . . . The author also describes the artist's unique spiritual journey and the inspiration for her later, abstract works in vivid prose that's worthy of the artist. An in-depth, highly personal portrait of a remarkable talent."
--Kirkus, starred review

"Coates's stirring debut imagines the life of painter Agnes Pelton . . . [and] brilliantly captures the creative eye of an unassuming, uniquely talented artist."
--Publishers Weekly

" . . . quietly moving . . . "️
--The New York Times Book Review

"Coates' first novel, a remarkable imagining of modernist artist Agnes Pelton's life, with layered focus on her personal and professional growth in New York and the Southwest, is an intriguing combination of historical fiction and biography. . . . deeply moving. . . . A meditative and memorable story of one artist's complex journey."
--Booklist

"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, author of A Girl Goes into the Forest

"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, author of Ship Fever and Archangel

"A luminous portrait of a woman with remarkable artistic talent, courage, and wisdom. Agnes Pelton grapples with the devastating consequences of a family scandal and her own secret passions during the tumultuous early twentieth century in America, when women had not yet won the right to vote. Beautifully written, the book is not only a feast for the senses but also a profound meditation on the creative process and the regenerative power of art."
--Helen Fremont, author of The Escape Artist and After Long Silence

"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, author of Improvement, winner of the PEN/Faulkner award for Fiction and the National Book Critics Circle Award

"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, author of Mercury and The Flight of Gemma Hardy

About the Author

Mari Coates lives in San Francisco, where, before embarking on fiction writing, she was an arts writer and the theater critic for the SF Weekly. She holds degrees from Connecticut College and the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers.