Girl Unframed

While spending a summer with her famous mother and her criminal boyfriend, Sydney Reilly, age fifteen, finds love with Nicco but her premonition of something bad coming proves dreadfully accurate.

Tucked away among the letters, diaries, and other ephemera in the Smithsonian's archives lies a trove of rarely seen snapshots of some of the twentieth century's most celebrated artists. Unlike the familiar official portraits and genius-at-work shots, these humble snaps capture creative giants with their guard down, in the moment, living life. Pablo Picasso stands proudly on a balcony with young daughter Maya—a tiny, meticulously inked annotation penned by an unknown hand proclaims that "he's very much in love." Jackson Pollock morosely carves a turkey while his mother, Stella, and wife, Lee Krasner, look on. A young Andy Warhol clowns for the camera with college friend Philip Pearlstein, and in a later shot more closely resembles his famously enigmatic public self at a gallery opening with John Lennon and Yoko Ono.

Is there a sublime beauty in the commonplace? How do we know it? How do we see it? How do we learn to taste, touch, feel, and see all the joys of creation in a more meaningful way? "Unframed Beauty" is a book about the commonplace. Elizabeth Elmers creatively sets out new ideas for observing the world more thoughtfully in order to find joy in everyday living. It's precisely because we fail to appreciate enough of the miracles around us that we need a book like this to remind us of all the amazing treasures of life right at our fingertips. T. DAVID GORDON writes: ""Beauty Unframed" is that extremely rare book that is hard to put down, though not narrative. There is probably an argument in it, but it does not feel like an argument; it feels like an invitation. It is an invitation--to look longer, smell longer, taste, hear, and feel longer, and more thoughtfully--at things that are well crafted. Whether at God's crafts or our own, this wonderful volume invites us, chapter by chapter, to notice what is worthy of our notice. I found it very hard to put down, and you will too."