Inspired by the life and work of Char­lotte Salomon, this nov­el depicts a young woman intent on pur­su­ing her art against all odds. Dur­ing Hitler’s rise to pow­er, she los­es her first-place prize at The Berlin Art Acad­e­my because she is a Jew. After Kristall­nacht, she is sent from Berlin into exile with her grand­par­ents on the Côte d’Azur.

When Charlotte’s grand­moth­er leaps to her death, her Old-World grand­fa­ther shocks her with the fam­i­ly secret: a lega­cy of female sui­cides, her own moth­er includ­ed. She strug­gles against his insis­tence that sui­cide, not art, is her des­tiny too — all the way from their intern­ment in a bleak camp in the Pyre­nees through their ardu­ous trek across moun­tain­ous back­coun­try to Mar­seille.

Haunt­ed by the encroach­ing ter­ror of the Third Reich and the threat of psy­cho­log­i­cal dis­in­te­gra­tion, Char­lotte clings to her deter­mi­na­tion to com­plete ​“Life? Or The­ater?” — a rad­i­cal mas­ter­piece of 869 watercolor/​gouache paint­ings — and risks her life to get it into safe­keep­ing in a race against time before cap­ture by the Nazis.