Discipline

Debra Spark

How does art mirror and shape our lives? Can it transcend the boundaries of time, wealth, and circumstance? Debra Spark-whose previous work the Washington Post described as “richly imaginative” and “real world magic”-explores these themes in her new novel Discipline. With a trio of important paintings missing, the book weaves together three narratives that span almost a century. From an inhumane boarding school in Maine in the late 1970s to a contemporary Boston art appraiser struggling with raising a teen to the long-lost love letters between a painter and his wife, Discipline is a propulsive literary mystery about family strife and devotion, ambition and authorship, and the abiding and mysterious power of art.

Inspired by the life and family of Walt Kuhn (the painter responsible for the 1913 Armory Show that introduced Americans to modernism) and the scandal-ridden Elan boarding school that was forced to shut down in 2011, this richly drawn, suspenseful novel shows Spark at her most masterful.

from Discipline

Something had gone wrong.

Gracie Thomas had arrived on the island just when she said she would, on the final ferry of the day, the winter light dimming over the course of the two-hour journey east, and she too preoccupied to enjoy the drama of the ocean, the air too bitterly cold for standing on deck, the filthy windows cloudy with condensation. A more avid lover of the great outdoors would have braved the temperatures, but when Gracie had to choose between the natural world and comfort, she opted for the latter. Camping or a flush toilet? The world’s greatest invention wins in a landslide!

By late afternoon, the question of the view was moot anyway, the day dark as midnight. Gracie’s mind was back in Boston, instead of on the Atlantic, her focus Jeremy, her 16-year-old son, the child whom she’d waited and waited and waited for, through one, two, three, four miscarriages, the one who was so, so, so wanted.

He had run away from home.