Attribution: A Novel

Cate Adamson despairs she’ll ever convince her misogynistic supervisor that her dissertation proposal in art history meets the standards of New York University. Dismissing her latest effort, the mean-spirited professor dispatches her to inventory the contents of a little-used basement. There she discovers an old painting in a chest. A long-lost seventeenth century masterpiece by Velázquez? Perhaps. Cate doesn’t know, but she intends to find out.

With the painting rolled up in a cardboard tube, she miraculously sneaks it out of the university, boards a plane, and flies to Spain to have it authenticated. The plot, part romance, part treasure hunt, turns on a chance encounter. Traveling by train to Seville, Cate meets an impoverished Spanish aristocrat who soon becomes her love interest and whose crumbling family home in Olivares just happens to house historical records and artifacts dating to the time of Velázquez.

Improbable to be sure, but thereafter Attribution delivers an exciting journey of exploration and discovery that builds to a tense press conference at which Cate reveals the painting’s extraordinary history and the identity of the artist. Filled with exciting findings and daunting setbacks as well as numerous fascinating art references, Attribution is an enthralling read.