Eighty-five years of art and his­to­ry through the eyes of a woman who fled her fam­i­ly – as re-imag­ined by her grand­daugh­ter. Anaïs Bar­beau-Lavalette nev­er knew her mother’s moth­er. Curi­ous to under­stand why her grand­moth­er, Suzanne, a some­time painter and poet asso­ci­at­ed with Les Automa­tistes, a move­ment of dis­si­dent artists that includ­ed Paul-Émile Bor­d­uas, aban­doned her hus­band and young fam­i­ly, Bar­beau-Lavalette hired a pri­vate detec­tive to piece togeth­er Suzanne’s life. Suzanne, win­ner of the Prix des libraires du Québec and a best­seller in French, is a fic­tion­al­ized account of Suzanne’s life over eighty-five years, from Mon­tre­al to New York to Brus­sels, from lover to lover, through an abor­tion, alco­holism, Bud­dhism, and an asy­lum. It takes read­ers through the Great Depres­sion, Québec’s Qui­et Rev­o­lu­tion, women’s lib­er­a­tion, and the Amer­i­can civ­il rights move­ment, offer­ing a por­trait of a volatile, fas­ci­nat­ing woman on the mar­gins of his­to­ry. And it’s a granddaughter’s search for a past for her­self, for under­stand­ing and forgiveness.