Summary
A wind-swept pocket of Dutch farmland, all ochre earth and pewter sky, cradles Rosemary van Voort, whose chisel sings across pale birch limbs, birthing dolls with eyes that seem to exhale longing. Picnicking bohemians—silk-scarved painters, a cellist, a ragged poet—stumble upon her makeshift studio and gasp: here is folk art raw enough to bruise Manhattan’s marble galleries. Off she sails to New York, trunks stuffed with shavings and naïveté, catapulted into a roaring market that devours authenticity. Commissions avalanche; patrons duel with checkbooks; her dolls fetch sums that could purchase the very tenements her parents once scrubbed. Yet the metropolis, that glittering arachnid, spins silk into snare. Ricardo Fitzmaurice, velvet-voiced and perilously charming, swears devotion while Madame Fedoreska—his former diva-mistress—keens backstage, her sanity guttering like a spent footlight. Jealousy curdles into threat: “I will kill you, little wood-spirit.” When Fedoreska falls dead—lead nestled beneath her corset—Rosemary stands mute, sans alibi, amid a jury of headlines screaming murder. The chisel-wielding prodigy becomes the carved suspect, her ascent inverted into vertiginous free-fall.
Synopsis
Rosemary van Voort lives in the countryside with her elderly Dutch parents. She carves beautiful wooden dolls, and her work catches the eye of a group of artists who are having a picnic in the area. Among them is Ricardo Fitzmaurice, an aspiring opera singer. The group convinces Rosemary to move to New York City in order to take full advantage of her talent. Soon she becomes wildly successful, but a problem arises--the temperamental Madame Fedoreska, who is in love with Ricardo, has been driven insane by his growing affection for Rosemary and threatens to kill her. When the Madame turns up shot to death, the police look at Rosemary as a suspect--and even worse, she has no alibi.
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