Burning and Dodging by Julie Wittes Schlack

Burning and Dodging by Julie Wittes Schlack

At nearly sixty, Tina Gabler is done living for everyone else.

After decades spent supporting the ambitions of family and colleagues, the would-be artist decides it's finally time to take her own creative life seriously. When she accepts a position as research assistant to legendary television news anchor Peter Bright at his remote home in the Thousand Islands, it seems like the perfect opportunity for reinvention.

Peter is racing to finish a controversial book exposing the hidden truth behind some of history's most famous photographs-images that shaped public perception but may have been staged, manipulated, or misunderstood.

As Tina digs into the stories behind the photographs, her research leads her far beyond the archive. She begins searching for the unidentified child in a famous Roman Vishniac image-and for Peter's estranged adopted daughter, taken from her Cree family during Canada's infamous Sixties Scoop.

But in trying to rewrite the endings of other people's stories, Tina is forced to confront her own past-especially the complicated legacy of the father whose ambitions once overshadowed her own.

Burning and Dodging is a witty, thoughtful, and deeply human novel about reinvention, truth in storytelling, and the courage it takes to claim a life that is finally your own.