Painted Lives

HE WAS THE IDOL OF THE ART WORLD. AND THE MYSTERY OF THE CENTURY. Mattie Sylvester, widow of one of America's most celebrated painters, spends most of her time gazing out to sea on an island off the Atlantic Coast, remembering. Her new secretary, Sarah Kidd, is fascinated by the eccentric household, and its mistress -- elegant, red-haired, fesity, and brooding. There must be tales she could tell about her fifty years with Gideon Sylvester. Slowly, as an unlikely bond forms between the two women, Mattie unravels the past -- her early life, her circle of artist friends in the 1920s, her…