Woman on Fire

 Woman on Fire by Lisa Barr is another fabulous novel about the artwork confiscated by the Nazis during World War II.  

Using  fictional characters , Barr sets up the situation that a young ambitious journalist becomes embroiled in an international art scandal as she searches for the missing Woman on Fire portrait painted by a new impressionist artist during the war.  

Jules Roth the young journalist pushes her way into the newsroom of Dan Mansfield, editor for the paper.  He hires her to help him find a famous painting,  missing since the war, for his long time friend, Elias Baum, a famous shoe designer.  Baum was a small child when his mother posed for the artist.  Elias remembers the day the Nazis came, took the painting and then killed his mother.  All these years later he wants retrieve the painting for his family.  

There is another person who also thinks the painting belongs to them, Marguerite de Laurent, a provocative and powerful art gallery owner.  She grew up working for her grandfather’s art gallery and he always spoke about the Woman on Fire painting and its importance to him.  She feels she is the rightful owner and wants the painting for her art collection.  She will go to great lengths to get it and is used to getting everything she wants.  This is an entertaining mystery novel set around the premise of being the first to find the painting and Jules is determined to prove her prowess as a reporter and get there first.

There are many twist and turns as the characters struggle to find and hold onto the painting .