Mad, bad, and dangerous to know is how Victorian society dismissed Emily Carr. Lewis DeSoto, a painter and novelist, sees Emily Carr as a woman in search of God, freedom, and the essence of art. Her quest to be an independent woman and a modern artist takes her from the studios of Paris to deep inside the remote Native villages of the West Coast forests. It is a lifetime journey of almost mythic proportions in which she struggles to define not only herself but also her country. A creator of extraordinary power, a seeker of mystical truth, a woman of unusual courage, Carr is revealed as one of those unique individuals who articulate the symbols and images by which Canada knows itself.

Märit Laurens is a young woman of British descent who comes to live with her husband, Ben, on their newly purchased farm along the border of South Africa. Shortly after her arrival, violence strikes at the heart of Märit's world. Devastated and confused but determined to run the farm on her own, Märit finds herself in a simmering tug of war between the local Afrikaner community and the black workers who live on the farm, both vying for control over the land in the wake of tragedy. Märit's only supporter is her black housekeeper, Tembi, who, like Märit, is alone in the world. Together, the women struggle to hold on to the farm, but the quietly encroaching civil war brings out conflicting loyalties that turn the fight for the farm into a fight for their lives.Thrilling to read, A Blade of Grass is a wrenching story of friendship and betrayal and of the trauma of the land that has shaped post-colonial Africa.Amazon.com ReviewLewis De Soto's debut novel, A Blade of Grass, tells the story of Marit Laurens, a young woman of British descent, recently orphaned, who has moved with her new husband Ben to a remote farm on the contested borderland between South Africa and an unnamed country. When Ben is killed by a bomb in an act of guerilla warfare, she decides to stay on and run the farm. Alone in the world, she befriends Tembi, the daughter of her black housemaid, who has also been killed, in an accident. Struggling to transform herself as the surrounding countryside descends into bloody conflict, Marit finds herself caught between the fear and prejudices of the local Afrikaner community and the shifting loyalties and growing feeling of entitlement of the indigenous black workers. When first the Afrikaners and then the blacks flee the area, and the outside world starts to encroach menacingly on the isolated farm, Marit is stripped of everything that gave her a sense of self and a sense of belonging to this place.A Blade of Grass is a delicate, if at times naively sentimental, exploration of the arc of a courageous relationship between two women from different societies, each an outcast from her own, during the death throes of apartheid: from the rigid structure of master and servant, through the tenderness of the shared experience of aloneness and defiance in the face of societal pressures, to betrayal. De Soto has transformed the quiet immensity of the South African veldt into spare, luminous prose. He contains everything--repression and ownership, belonging and loss, humiliation and hope--in the small gesture, the seed, the blade of grass. The story's brutality is barely graphic in its depiction, but the terror is present nonetheless, lurking insistently beneath the surface, waiting at the edge of the farm. --Diana Kuprel, Amazon.caFrom BooklistPart historical fiction, part war-survivor story, this beautiful first novel is above all an intimate drama of two young South African women who cross apartheid barriers in their search for home. The time is the 1970s somewhere near the border. When the civil war comes close and a farmer is killed, his widow refuses to leave with the other whites. Her housekeeper, Tembi, is the only black person to stay on when the government soldiers drive away her people. The story is told from the women's alternating viewpoints as they break down the mistress-servant relationship, care for each other, and work the land, even when they lose electricity, running water, crops, cattle, and all outside contact. Tembi's voice is sometimes too distant, but her personal story brings close the apartheid atrocity of family breakup. With lyrical simplicity, DeSoto evokes the elemental landscape of the veldt that survives even the screaming military jets. In the tradition of Olive Schreiner's classic Story of an African Farm (1883), the focus is on women, their loneliness and strength. Hazel RochmanCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Leo Millar is a young painter in Paris who seems to have it all—a beautiful French wife, a talented young son, a thriving career. And then in one terrible moment he loses everything. Overcome by guilt and despair, he flees to an island off the coast of Normandy, thinking that his life is over. Soon the island begins to work its magic when Leo encounters a brilliant but troubled musician who is fighting her own demons. But it is only when a strange, damaged child enters Leo's life that he has a chance to move beyond his own losses and find, perhaps, a new definition of love and the restoration of hope.Advance Acclaim for The Restoration Artist"With the language of a poet and the eye of a painter, Lewis DeSoto has written a book of astonishing depth. This timeless novel lures the reader to a near-mythical island of beauty and longing, and there explores loss, grief and the meaning not only of art but of life itself." —Lauren B. Davis, author of Our Daily Bread and The Empty Room"The Restoration Artist is an elegant book—sombre, observant and immensely readable. DeSoto understands that within the necessary aloneness of an artist there is a need for connection. When a man is an island, he finds meaning in the rhythms of the tide." —Katherine Govier, author of Three Views of Crystal Water and The Ghost Brush"Lewis DeSoto has a sure and constant eye for both the physical world and the breach between the artist's vision and the artist's heart. This novel is a tenderly rendered tableau of loss and renewal." —Tessa McWatt, author of Step Closer and Vital Signs