Restoration: A Novel - Hardcover

More than sixty years after Levette Asmore, a talented young artist committed suicide after destroying his most famous work, a controversial mural, journalist Jack Charbonnet and art restorer Rhys Goudeau discover that the painter may not have destroyed the infamous painting and match wits with greedy rivals to find the priceless work of art.

ing painting by a legendary suicide provides the key to John Ed Bradley's mesmerizing novel of New Orleans–a city where art, sex, and race link the city's decadent past with its decaying present.

The mysterious Levette Asmore was a legend in New Orleans even before he apparently threw himself off the Huey P. Long Bridge in 1941 at the height of his creative powers. Widely regarded as the finest and most original painter ever produced by the American South, Asmore won fame for a series of portraits depicting beautiful young women with whom he was rumored to be sexually involved. And while a certain promiscuity was long tolerated in the old, benighted city, there was no hiding Asmore's secret past in the dark heart of Depression-era Louisiana. When a newspaper reported that the WPA mural he was painting laid waste to sexual taboos and the prevailing racial order, Asmore was ordered to whitewash the masterpiece before the public was allowed to see it. Weeks aft