The Lost Madonna [Mass Market Paperback]

Kelly Jones (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 6, 2007

Thirty years after leaving Florence with a broken heart, Suzanne Cunningham is back, determined to solve the mystery of what happened to a priceless painting from her past-and to the man who forever changed the course of her life.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Suzanne Cunningham, an art-history professor living in Idaho, is thrilled when she is invited to lecture at a university in Florence. Suzanne has an intense connection with the city. In November of 1966, Suzanne, 19, was visiting Florence when the now-infamous flood occurred. She stays to help with the recovery of precious artwork from the Uffizi, a decision that changes her life. She falls in love with both a painting, a haunting fifteenth-century portrait of the madonna and child, and a man, sensual art restorer Stefano Leonetti. Still enamored of both after all this time, Suzanne is shocked when she reads a journal article that claims that the painting was lost in the flood. Knowing that to be false, Suzanne begins an investigation that brings her past back into the foreground, including a secret she's been guarding carefully. Jones' vivid descriptions of Florence, and the involving story, will captivate art and fiction lovers. Kristine Huntley
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review

Kelly Jones is a wonderful writer, and definitely one to watch. -- Nicholas Sparks

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Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 18 and up
  
• Mass Market Paperback: 328 pages
• Publisher: Berkley (February 6, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0425214192
• ISBN-13: 978-0425214190
• Product Dimensions: 6.6 x 4.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #336,222 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Kelly Jones grew up in Twin Falls, Idaho. She attended Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington, graduating magna cum laude with a degree in English and an art minor. She spent her junior year in Italy at the Gonzaga-in-Florence program and developed a love for travel, a passion she now shares with her husband, Jim. An art history class in Florence fueled a love for the history of art, which has become an integral part of her writing.
Her latest release, The Woman Who Heard Color (Berkley Books, October, 2011), is a historical novel set in Munich, Berlin, and New York. A story of family loyalty, banned art, and creative freedom, it spans a period of over a century.
Her previous novels include The Seventh Unicorn (Berkley Books, 2005), inspired by The Lady and the Unicorn Tapestries in the Cluny Museum in Paris, France, and The Lost Madonna (Berkley Books, 2007), set in Florence, Italy.
She is a mother and grandmother and is married to former Idaho Attorney General Jim Jones, who now serves on Idaho's Supreme Court. They live in Boise.
Visit Kelly at www.kellyjonesbooks.com

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Bittersweet tale..., November 1, 2007

By 

Deborah Wiley (Winter Haven, FL) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Lost Madonna (Mass Market Paperback)

Professor Suzanne Cunningham hasn't returned to Italy since the flood of 1966. She is thrilled when an old friend offers her the opportunity to teach art history in Florence, and begins preparing for the courses she will teach. Much to her surprise, she finds a reference to a painting she helped restore after the flood, a painting that is now listed as lost in that very same flood. Suzanne will have to travel back into her past memories to a time when her love for art restorer Stefano Leonetti inspired her current love of art itself. Suzanne will have to face her past in order to move on with her future....

THE LOST MADONNA is really two tales in one. First, it is the slow unwinding of what really happened on Suzanne's first journey to Italy as a young nineteen year old. Her experiences as a "mud angel", rescuing art during the flood, are just as important as her affair and love for Stefano at that time. Suzanne has lived a life shadowed by the events of her past and it is only now, as a middle aged woman, that she is venturing back to face what transpired. The second portion of the tale, interwoven with the revelations of past events, is Suzanne's journey back to love. Never has Suzanne loved another since Stefano, but Dr. Roberto Balducci touches something deep inside of Suzanne. Can she learn to love again?

THE LOST MADONNA is a compelling although sometimes meandering tale. There were moments when I was frustrated by the story's slow pace and yet Kelly Jones steadily drew me into the storyline so that I had to know how it would all end. Perhaps the most intriguing aspects were the glimpses, both past and present, which the author gave of Italy. The city of Florence is almost a character itself and Kelly Jones brings it to vivid life through her beautiful descriptions. THE LOST MADONNA is a bittersweet tale that will leave the reader with mixed emotions as the story concludes.

COURTESY OF CK2S KWIPS AND KRITIQUES

5.0 out of 5 stars Mature, Intelligent Romance, October 10, 2010

By 

Margaret J. Ashworth "Liber Amatrix" - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Lost Madonna (Kindle Edition)

As a mature reader I gave up on romance novels many years ago, but after reading Kelly Jones' The Lost Madonna, I realize that affairs of the heart can still be interesting, especially when the story is both mysterious and intellectual. Finally, here is a romance/mystery that eschews bodice-ripping but embraces complex emotions, all while enlightening the reader with the fascinating details of Italian Renaissance Art. (I love learning something new while being entertained.) The characters are engaging and believable, and the plot hums along at a good pace. But Jones is not only a good story-teller, she is also a good story-ender. The conclusions of both The Lost Madonna and her her first novel, The Seventh Unicorn, are both unusually satisfying, a rare occurrence in many contemporary novels.

5.0 out of 5 stars a totally wonderful story, July 3, 2009

By 

Stephanie Cowell (New York, New York United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Lost Madonna (Mass Market Paperback)

This is one of the novels I love best; I have read it three or four times. The plot, the setting and the characters are vibrant, touching and altogether first rate. I am a novelist myself ("Marrying Mozart" from Viking Penguin and a new one on Claude Monet coming soon from Crown) and the novels I want to fall into again and again are a great treasure to me.

I love the novel's world of Florence 30 years ago during the flood where the heroine was one of the "mud angels" who help rescue the deluged art and her current return there as an art professor. She returns full of memories of a love affair with a young married Italian art restorer and of a small, precious Renaissance painting which she helped restore long ago and which has been reported missing. Her American marriage has ended and to her great sorrow, she is childless. Possible love enters her life in the form of a widowed doctor who is partially crippled with polio. Though she is drawn to this kind though touchy man, she is also compelled to find out why both her former lover and the little painting of the Madonna have disappeared and goes in search of both.

Buy it!!