Girl with Parasol

Girl with Parasol is a suspenseful novel about looting of Jewish-owned artworks by the Nazis during World War II. These crimes hit the headlines in 2013 with the discovery of an art cache in Munich, and in 2014 with the release of George Clooney's film The Monuments Men. "Girl with Parasol" is the name of a portrait painted by Monet in 1905. It shows a girl with a white parasol standing on a bridge above a lily pond. The model was the daughter of Monet's art dealer, Tania Wertheimer. When the Germans invade France in 1940, Tania's daughter Corinne keeps the painting hidden. The Nazis expropriate the family gallery and confiscate the stock. Corinne turns for help to her friend Rose, who is a curator at the Musee du Jeu de Paume. The Nazis use the Jeu de Paume as a transit point for artworks looted from the Jews. Rose is the sole French curator allowed to remain. She spies on the Germans and risks her life to pass details of mass-scale looting to the Resistance. In 1941, Corinne meets Thomas, a German diplomat. Thomas is handsome, entertaining, and openly sceptical of the Nazis. At first she resists his advances, but they begin an affair, and start to fall in love. And then Foreign Minister Ribbentrop announces he wants a Monet portrait, word gets out that Corinne owns "Girl with Parasol," and Thomas is pressured to get hold of the painting. Trapped, desperate and panicking, he triggers a chain of events that will lead to disaster.