The Black Velvet Coat by Jill G Hall: book review

The Black Velvet Coat (2015) is set in San Francisco in 2013, and 50 years beforehand in 1963 in Arizona.

Struggling 28-year-old artist, Anne McFarland, buys a black velvet 1960s retro coat in a thrift shop. Wearing it, she feels like a millionaire. In the pocket is a key. Anne learns about the past owner and becomes wrapped up in the past. It inspires a series of paintings: the Sylvia series.

In 1963 at the age of twenty-one, heiress Sylvia Van Dam is engaged to Robert Lorenzo Lopez, a charismatic playboy. In her black velvet coat she dazzled. As the wedding day approaches, she learns too much about her husband-to-be. Afraid, she takes the next drastic step to ending their engagement. She plans her escape to the Arizona hinterland.

Simplistic but easy-to-read novel of artistic creativity and inspiration, poverty and weath, nature and excess, and two women facing fears, loneliness, and detachment before becoming their true selves.

MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of:- Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

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