The Clarity of Light

About the Book

The Clarity of Light is the story of an alluring French-American artist and the erotic game she plays to distract herself from her disintegrating family and doomed marital engagement. Set in southern Provence in the 1990s, it traces the journey of Nicole Coche-Dury, who has traveled to the region with her fiancé, Sean Thomas, to reunite with her ailing grandmother. Inspired by the writings of Vincent van Gogh, she embarks on a dangerous quest to discover the true nature of love — and art — among the ragged beauty and crumbling relics of Arles and Saint-Rémy. She finds comfort in the company of a glamorous Italian businessman, only to find that she is haunted by self-destructive fantasies similar to those that plagued the deceased painter van Gogh.

About the Author

Greg P. Foley is an award-winning journalist and freelance writer who was raised in New England and Paris, France. After earning a degree in English from the University of Colorado in 1989, he intermittently lived and worked in central and southern France for four years. He started work on The Clarity of Light in 1997 while living in Boulder, Colorado, and continued writing the novel during three of years of work for the Pulitzer Prize-winning Point Reyes Light newspaper in Marin County, California. His newspaper writing has been recognized for its excellence by the National Newspaper Association and the California Newspaper Publishers Association. He lives and works near Ketchum, Idaho.