Synopsis
Artwork stolen by the Nazis, a multi-million dollar forgery ring, a missing Medici diary and the kidnapping of a beautiful Jewish graduate student surface when art professor Porter Blue takes a sabbatical to Florence, Italy.In 1962, a remarkable discovery is made in the bowels of the Church of Santo Spirito: a box containing four diaries from the hand of Contessina de’ Medici, the youngest daughter of Lorenzo de’ Medici, one of the most powerful men in Renaissance Italy. Numbered 1, 2, 3 and 5, the story of the missing fourth diary inspires Blue to craft an historical novel around a speculated romance between Contessina and the young Michelangelo. Blue convinces Largo Kopacz, a graduate student and new-found love interest, to join him for the week of spring break. Theo Volmer, charismatic Uffizi director and son of a Nazi SS officer, is known for having returned artworks originally stolen by his father to their rightful owners. During a dinner party at Volmer’s home, Largo stumbles upon a private gallery and a painting remarkably like one stolen from her own great-grandparents. Before Blue and Largo can act upon the discovery, Largo is kidnapped from a tour bus, Blue seeks help from a Scotland Yard agent in Florence investigating an art forgery and Volmer’s home goes up in flames.
About the Author
Noyes Capehart was born and raised near Nashville,Tennessee. He attended college at the University of the South (Sewanee), before transferring to Auburn University where he received a BA degree in art. From 1958 through 1960, he worked as a guard and night watchman at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. He was called in late 1960 to return to Auburn and fill in for an ailing faculty member. Realizing a love for teaching, he went to the University of Missouri in 1963 for his master’s degree in printmaking. He taught at the University of Missouri, the University of Mississippi and at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina until his retirement in 1997; a combined teaching career of nearly thirty-five years. Noyes Capehart has been exhibiting professionally in adjudicated exhibitions and regional and national levels since 1958, including exhibitions at The Whitney Museum of American Art, The Smithsonian Museum of Art, The Brooklyn Museum of Art, The North Carolina Museum of Art and The Mint Museum of Art. His artwork has appeared in the North Carolina Literary Review and in Symposium: A Quarterly Journal in Modern Literatures. In 2006, Dancingfish Press published The Private Diary of Noyes Capehart, a fifty-year overview of the artist’s visual career. That same year, North Carolina’s Our State magazine did a feature article on Noyes’ Private Diary pictures and UNC-TV followed with an Emmy-award winning program on his uniquely visual and literary approach to picture making. Noyes Capehart has been writing since the late 1960’s. In addition to Devil’s Mark, Noyes has written three other full length novels and numerous short stories. Noyes Capehart is married to Suzie Connor and between them they have six children and eleven grand-children. Noyes and Suzie reside in Boone, North Carolina. Persons interested in the art and writing of Noyes are invited to visit his website: www.capehart.org.
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