Writ­ing his­tor­i­cal fic­tion involves the intri­cate blend­ing of both fact and fab­ri­ca­tion. In the case of my new nov­el, The Lost Mas­ter­piece, I spent count­less hours research­ing the goings-on in Paris from the late-nine­teenth cen­tu­ry through World War II; then, even more effort wrestling this infor­ma­tion into a sto­ry that — I hope — rings true, reveals both the known and unknown of that time, and entertains. 

One of the most fas­ci­nat­ing top­ics I explored was the return of Nazi-stolen art­works to their right­ful own­ers. As a Jew, an aca­d­e­m­ic, and an insa­tiable read­er, I was already famil­iar with this orches­trat­ed plun­der of hun­dreds of thou­sands of art­works, designed to erase Jew­ish cul­ture while enrich­ing the Third Reich. Her­mann Göring, in par­tic­u­lar, cher­ry-picked stolen mas­ter­pieces for his per­son­al col­lec­tion, along with those that would be dis­played in Hitler’s post-war Führermu­se­um — a muse­um that for­tu­nate­ly nev­er came to fruition. 

What I didn’t know much about was the resti­tu­tion process: to find these art­works and return them to the fam­i­lies from whom they were stolen. This process began at the end of the war and has con­tin­ued to this day. As soon as I began read­ing about this ardu­ous endeav­or, I was hooked. Part of what I love about writ­ing his­tor­i­cal fic­tion is dis­cov­er­ing a fact, a sto­ry, or a moment that I know will pull the nar­ra­tive together. 

In the case of The Lost Mas­ter­piece, I was search­ing for a link between the past and my con­tem­po­rary through­line. The past sto­ry­line fol­lows the life of the unsung artist Berthe Morisot, an extra­or­di­nary ear­ly Impres­sion­ist who worked along­side Mon­et, Renoir, Manet, and Degas — the only woman amongst them. I want­ed to coun­ter­bal­ance her life with a con­tem­po­rary nar­ra­tive that would shed light on what had hap­pened to her lega­cy after she died, par­tic­u­lar­ly the misog­y­ny that large­ly buried her work. I need­ed a con­nec­tion between the two sto­ry­lines and I had a feel­ing there was some­thing in my his­tor­i­cal research that was going to do just that. I had no idea what aspect would spark my nov­el into being, but I was cer­tain if I spent enough time, I would find it.

I dipped into books on the sub­ject: The Rape of Europa: The Fate of Europe’s Trea­sures in the Third Reich and the Sec­ond World War by Lynn Nichols, The Lost Muse­um by Héc­tor Feli­ciano, and The Lady in Gold: The Extra­or­di­nary Tale of Gus­tav Klimt’s Mas­ter­piece, Por­trait of Adele Bloch-Bauer by Anne-Marie O’Connor. I watched doc­u­men­taries: PBS’s Plun­der­er: The Life and Times of a Nazi Art Thief and direc­tor Jane Chablani’s Steal­ing Klimt. And I lis­tened to pod­casts includ­ing Art Bust and Dan Snow’s Hunt­ing Stolen Nazi Art. And of course, the movie The Mon­u­ments Men (based on Robert M. Edsel’s book by the same name). All of which I would high­ly recommend.

After months of research, I final­ly found my spark — the Con­fer­ence on Jew­ish Mate­r­i­al Claims Against Ger­many. Formed in 1951, its mis­sion was to secure com­pen­sa­tion for Jew­ish vic­tims of Nazi per­se­cu­tion. It made me won­der: What if a paint­ing stolen by the Nazis and assumed destroyed actu­al­ly sur­vived? And what if this mirac­u­lous paint­ing is returned by the Claims Con­fer­ence to the only liv­ing heir decades lat­er bound up in„mysteries and secrets she must unrav­el? It could work. But not easily. 

How­ev­er, it turns out that, although part of the Claims Conference’s mis­sion is recov­er­ing stolen Jew­ish prop­er­ty and over­see­ing repa­ra­tions, nei­ther of these is its pri­ma­ry focus. In actu­al­i­ty, its role is more admin­is­tra­tive than action-ori­ent­ed. Such as nego­ti­at­ing con­tracts with the Ger­man gov­ern­ment to cre­ate and expand numer­ous com­pen­sa­tion pro­grams; over­see­ing the dis­tri­b­u­tion of repa­ra­tions deliv­ered by oth­er agen­cies that pro­vide direct ser­vices to sur­vivors; recov­er­ing and sell­ing Jew­ish prop­er­ty where there is no liv­ing heir, in order to aid those who had man­aged to out­live the hor­ror; fund­ing Holo­caust edu­ca­tion and research to doc­u­ment his­to­ry and teach it to future generations. 

While all of these aims are praise­wor­thy and nec­es­sary, none of them were help­ful for the pur­pos­es of my book. Scenes of bureau­crats fil­ing reports and design­ing cur­ric­u­la, no mat­ter how hon­or­able, do not make a com­pelling nov­el. But I was com­plete­ly tak­en by the idea and was reluc­tant to let it go. 

And this is where the mag­ic his­tor­i­cal fic­tion comes in. Sure, the real Claims Con­fer­ence isn’t direct­ly involved in the recov­ery of the lost art­work. Nor are they deal­ing direct­ly with the dis­burse­ment of stolen prop­er­ty to indi­vid­u­als. But what if my fic­tion­al ver­sion of the Con­fer­ence was? 

What if a lawyer work­ing for the Boston office of the Claims Con­fer­ence — which doesn’t exist — was respon­si­ble for return­ing a miss­ing paint­ing? What if he brought it to a woman who had no idea she had ances­tors liv­ing in France dur­ing World War II? What if it was a mul­ti-mil­lion-dol­lar mas­ter­piece by Édouard Manet that had been miss­ing for eighty years? And what if the cen­tral fig­ure in the paint­ing was Berthe Morisot? 

The ideas kept pump­ing. What if the paint­ing had mys­te­ri­ous­ly sur­vived when oth­er art­work around it had not? What if Manet didn’t actu­al­ly paint it? What if a ghost inhab­it­ed it with a mis­sion to expose the truth? While some of these ideas stuck and oth­ers did not, three years lat­er, with the help of the Claims Con­fer­ence, The Lost Mas­ter­piece is the result.