The Sitter

The Sitter is the story of Hortense, wife of the Painter Paul Cezanne, and Georgia, a writer who, at 16, was forced to give up her child for adoption. Although Hortense and Georgia are born more than a century apart, they exist, together, in a hotel in Paris at the beginning of the pandemic. Georgia is anxious to catch a flight home to Sydney before the Australian border closes. Hortense is the subject of a novel that Georgia has been writing. But when the two witness a terrible accident from the window of the hotel, Georgia abandons the novel about Hortense and begins to write about the forced adoption in her own past, and Hortense becomes a nightly reader of this new story. There are clues in this story, clues that Hortense becomes increasingly aware of as she reads, and when Georgia’ s life becomes in danger, Hortense knows what action she must take.