Featured Book: Georgia by Dawn Tripp

Sara Trucksess

Georgia by Dawn Tripp is a pensive and empowering novel distilling the essence of Georgia O’Keeffe into a beautiful story filled with meaning and respect. Whether or not O’Keeffe herself would have approved of this rendering is up for debate, and frankly, highly unlikely. Yet while you are immersed in this novel, it doesn’t seem to matter. Tripp creates a language of greatness, value and power that is impossible to step away from until the very last page.

Focusing largely on Georgia O’Keeffe’s romantic and professional relationship with the father of modern American photography, Alfred Steiglitz, this exquisite novel attempts to simultaneously establish O’Keeffe as both Steiglitz’s lover and a woman and artist of her own creation. Tripp’s emotional dialogue makes you feel like you are living inside Georgia’s skin, treading with such clarity and boldness that this fictional novel feels like truth. Tripp’s imagined Georgia prickles at the genderization of her artwork, seeking to appease…