title: Fugitive Blue
author:  Dani Shapiro 
description: Shapiro ( Playing with Fire ) explores artistic motivations, selfishness and interdependence in this dark and lushly told tale. Her title refers to the Prussian blue paint favored by Picasso during his blue period, called "fugitive" because it eventually bleeds into and taints the colors around it. More broadly, the title hints at narrator Joanna Hirsch's sense of herself--she says that her months in the womb were "the only time my mother felt that my existence was not erasing hers as surely as if my presence were a noxious, fugitive blue." Flashbacks reveal that when Joanna was 12, her mother fled their New Jersey home for a SoHo loft, forsaking the responsibilities of parenthood for greater freedom to pursue her art. Now 32 and an Off-Broadway actress, Joanna still craves her world-famous mother's acknowledgment, and she realizes that a similar dynamic of abandonment has shaped her relationships with men. Shapiro's resonant and complex storytelling earns the reader's full attention, as Joanna reassembles the shards of a broken mirror until at last it reflects a complete, if fragmented, portrait. BOMC selection. <br />Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
zlib_text: ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
  
  
  My gratitude to Jonathan Wilson, Jennifer Egan, Hilary Black, and Sue Shapiro,
  who made valuable comments on early drafts; Dr. Laura Popper and Dr. David
  Kaufman for generously sharing their medical expertise, and a whole lot more;
  Jennifer Rudolph Walsh for being the best friend and agent a writer could hope
  for; and the brilliant Jordan Pavlin, whose attention to this book has been a
  gift and a revelation.
  
  
  
  
  
  BOOKS BY DANI SHAPIRO
  
  
  _Playing with Fire_  
   _Fugitive Blue_  
   _Picturing the Wreck_  
   _Slow Motion_  
   _Family History_  
  
  
  
  
  
  DANI SHAPIRO
  
  
  FAMILY HISTORY
  
  
  Dani Shapiro is the author of three acclaimed novels, _Playing with Fire_ ,
  _Fugitive Blue_ , and _Picturing the Wreck_ , and the bestselling memoir _Slow
  Motion_. She teaches in the graduate writing program at The New School, and
  has written for _The New Yorker_ , _Granta_ , _Elle_ , and _Ploughshares_ ,
  among other magazines. She lives with her husband and son in Litchfield
  County, Connecticut. H