Somewhere Waiting: The Life and Art of Christiane Pflug

The first biography of Christiane Pflug, this book tells the story of one of Canada's most important realist painters, who was born to a liberated fashion designer in Berlin, but was spared the Nazi's camps for evacuee children by taking refuge with a rigidly Roman Catholic family in the Austrian Tyrol. Reunited with her mother only in her mid-teens, she found her artistic destiny in Paris when she met Michael Pflug, an intense medical student who was also an artist. Pygmalion-like, he urged Christiane to become a painter, and directed her career as she became an acclaimed Canadian artist, until her depression and subsequent suicide in 1972. Davis draws on unpublished manuscripts, letters, interviews, and Christiane's paintings and drawings to tell a fascinating story that ranges from Germany and France to Tunisia and Toronto.