True Colors - Hardcover

Mortman, Doris

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0517592622 ISBN 13: 9780517592625

Publisher: Crown, 1994

Synopsis

Doris Mortman, author of the best-selling novels First Born, Rightfully Mine and The Wild Rose, returns with a compelling story set amid the glamorous international art scene, about a gifted young artist who is haunted by the memory of her mother's brutal murder.

About this title

From Publishers Weekly:

Despite a slow start, inventory-like descriptions and some unbelievable plot pivots in its first half, Mortman's fourth novel (after The Wild Rose) winds up spinning an intricate, compelling and romantic story of undone loyalties and unearthed secrets. Isabelle de Luna and Nina Duran are raised as sisters by a kind, struggling couple, who own a hotel and an art gallery in Santa Fe. The Durans took in Nina as a foundling and, a decade later, in 1963, opened their arms to Isabelle, seven, who had just witnessed the rape-murder of her mother, a wealthy Spanish artist, and the arrest of her father for the crime. Years later, Nina discovers the true circumstances of her adoption by the Durans and, in a credulity-stretching development, leaves Santa Fe for New York, creating a new identity and severing all past ties. Meanwhile, Isabelle has assuaged her grief over her parents' deaths through her art, evolving into the "most sensual, accessible artist since Georgia O'Keeffe." Nina and Isabelle cross paths repeatedly, if not amiably, with Nina's ascendance as a society reporter allowing her to perform hatchet jobs on her sister, whose artistic success she envies. The entanglements of both women with assorted men propel the story to its dizzying, satisfying conclusion, in which Nina comes to terms with her origins and Isabelle recovers the memory of her mother's true killer, so that each can be free to love. Major ad/promo; Literary Guild and Doubleday Book Club selection; available in large-print edition from Random House ($23, ISBN 0-679-76034-2); author tour.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist:

Mortman is a best-selling novelist who manages to combine all the fury and fluff of passion and fashion with the insights and interest of popular art and political history. In her last book, The Wild Rose, she portrayed a concert pianist's rise to fame from the wreckage of cold war Hungary. Here her talented and, of course, beautiful heroine is a Barcelonese painter whose family lives in opposition to Franco's mercurial and ruthless regime. Isabelle de Luna is a veritable princess for her first seven years, but it all comes to a violent end when her mother is raped and murdered and her father is accused of the crime. Little Isabelle actually witnesses the murder, but the killer's face is buried deep in her scarred subconscious. Isabelle grows up in exile in the home of family friends, the Durans, in Santa Fe. Their adopted daughter isn't all that thrilled about acquiring a sister, and the seeds of their destructive and flamboyant rivalry are sown early. Each evolves into a glamorous woman, and each achieves fame. Sleazy Nina becomes a notorious gossip columnist and TV celebrity, while pure and sensitive Isabelle becomes one of the world's most celebrated artists. Differences aside, they are both haunted by their tragic pasts and their inability to find true love. Mortman sets out quite a feast: alluring and sophisticated characters, steamy sex, and a captivating plot involving murder, great wealth and power, international intrigue, art, ambition, and redemption. This is pop fiction for culture vultures: fun and provocative. Donna Seaman

About this edition

• Publisher: Crown
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 0517592622
• ISBN 13: 9780517592625
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 553