Why a Booktrail?
1938: A Frida Kahlo painting, a scandal, and secrets that threaten to change the course of history
The End of the Vodka
What you need to know before your trail
Showgirl-turned-socialite Dorothy Hale falls from a Manhattan skyscraper. Her friend Clare Boothe Luce – writer, diplomat and rising political figure – commissions Frida Kahlo to paint a memorial portrait.
Months later, reporting from Europe, Clare encounters the Duchess of Windsor in Paris and begins to question what really happened that night. In New York, Frida, estranged from Diego Rivera, wrestles with betrayal, ambition and the demands of her art. As she works on the painting that will become one of her most unsettling, she edges closer to the truth.
At the heart of this novel lies a real-life mystery: was Dorothy Hale’s death an act of despair, or something far more dangerous, entangled with the power struggles shaping the modern world?
Locations
Reset- France - Paris
- A: Ritz hotel
- Mexico - Mexico City
- B: Frida Kahlo Museum
- C: Museo Anahuacalli
- America/USA - New York- New York City
- D: Hampshire House
- E: 25 Broadway
Travel Guide
Frida Kahlo
Frida was a Mexican painter known for her many portraits, self-portraits, and works inspired by the nature and artifacts of Mexico. Inspired by the country’s popular culture, she employed a naïve folk art style to explore questions of identity, postcolonialism, gender, class, and race in Mexican society
Diego Rivera
Kahlo began a relationship with Rivera, who was 21 years her senior and had two common-law wives
BookTrail Boarding Pass: The End of the Vodka
Destination: Mexico City, New York, Paris Author/guide: Oscar de Muriel Departure Time: 1928
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