Summary
Amedeo Kaplan and his divorced mother Loretta Bevilacqua have moved from Epiphany, New York to St. Malo, Florida. He is a new boy at school for the first time, and does not yet have friends (September). He is happy to befriend the next-door neighbor Mrs. Zender, an opera singer on the European circuit in the fifties, who retired then retired with a European husband to her childhood mansion in St. Malo. Mrs. Zender is moving to Waldorf Court while she can still afford it and Amedeo volunteers to help liquidate most of her possessions.
From his artist father Jake Kaplan, who lives back north, and many visits to the fine arts institutions of New York City, Amedeo is already a novice expert on paintings and drawings, at least. Working with classmate William Wilcox and his single mother, the professional appraiser and estate liquidator Mrs. Zender has engaged, he learns a lot more about the business, about people, and about Mrs. Zender who is in and out of every room they work.
Amedeo's godfather Peter Vanderwaal, who directs an art center is preparing to host a traveling exhibition of Degenerate Art, a selection from the 1937 exhibition Entartete Kunst in Munich, the heart of Nazi Germany. Meanwhile, Peter's father John has died in Epiphany and his mother Mrs. Vanderwaal has pressed upon him a box that contains his father's life story. Also in the meantime, Amedeo finds on a Zender bookshelf a small drawing signed "Modigliani" —apparently the modern artist Modigliani. From Peter, he learns that Modigliani died young (in 1920); his paintings and drawings were commonly forged in post-war Europe.
On the one hand, Amedeo finally recalls that the drawing is familiar because he has seen it many times, within a family photo displayed at the Vanderwaal home. On the other hand, Amedeo and William come to suspect that Mrs. Zender planted the drawing for him to find. Peter never looked closely at John Vanderwaal's box before his mother repossessed it at the exhibition, but Mrs. Vanderwaal follows up a phone conversation with her son by driving her Winnebago to St. Malo and delivering the "life" directly to Amedeo and William.
With John Vanderwaal in hand and Mrs. Zender at hand, Amedeo and William pursue the mystery.
Read more about this topic: The Mysterious Edge Of The Heroic World
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