When Emily Bradshaw successfully bids on a small sketchbook at an auction in Bristol, she has no idea that she’s made a discovery that will send shockwaves through her whole life—and the entire art world. As she learns about Herbert Draper, the late Victorian artist behind the work, Emily quickly finds herself embroiled in a mystery involving “sun mark” clues printed on the back of several priceless paintings by the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.
But what she doesn’t realize is she’s only one small player in a much larger game that involves a father and daughter haunted by a dark family secret, and the sinister, violent figures plotting a daring art robbery. Before long, it’s a race against time to prevent eight precious Pre-Raphaelite paintings in an Oxford museum from being stolen.
Michael J. Gowers’s THE GATES OF DAWN is a thoroughly enjoyable novel—an exciting “art thriller” with a fascinating and complex plot that twists and turns while keeping the reader at the edge of their seat. The storylines take place in several time periods: the meetings of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in the 1840s, a lonely boy determined to hold onto a beloved Millais painting in the 1890s, an attempted gallery heist in Birmingham at the beginning of the twentieth century, and the central plotline (at the turn of the Millennium).
Gowers’s novel draws on real life people and paintings, and his research is excellent. It was an absolute delight to read the imagined histories, lives, loves, and legacies of the pre-Raphaelite circle—from working-girl-turned-Victorian-supermodel Annie Miller to the painter William “Maniac” Holman Hunt.
The author has such clear passion for the paintings at the heart of his story, as exemplified by the analysis he weaves into his narrative. For example, on John Everett Millais’s 1856 painting The Blind Girl: “For such a young man, the skill with which Millais had pictured their desperate plight and garnished it with a dash of hope and acceptance, almost brought a tear to the eye. It was all there in the tiniest details: the tortoiseshell butterfly on the blind girl’s shawl, mirroring the innocence and frailty of its host.”
THE GATES OF DAWN has the high-octane art history thrill of The Da Vinci Code, but may also remind one of A.S. Byatt’s incredible novel Possession: another work of historiographic metafiction. Familiarity with those novels is not a requirement, though; Gowers’s story will fascinate its reader either way.
THE GATES OF DAWN by Michael J. Gowers is a well-written, engaging novel that weaves a complex story with a cast of interesting characters and keeps the reader hooked until the last page.
~Emily Jessica Turner for IndieReader