In the summer of 1889 a young man sits painting a line of elms in Kensington Gardens.
One day he glimpses a mother at play with her two daughters and decides to include
them in his picture. From that moment he is haunted by dreams that seem to
foreshadow his doom.
A century later, in Kentish Town, a painter and her grown-up daughters receive news of
an ancestor linking them to the long-vanished double portrait of "Molly & the Captain".
Meanwhile friendship with a young musician stirs unexpected passions and threatens to
tear the family apart.
Molly & the Captain is a story about time and art and love. Through the prism of a single
painting it examines the mysteries of creativity, and the ambiguous nature of success.
What weighs more, loyalty to one's talent or loyalty to one's blood? Does self-sacrifice
ennoble the soul or degrade it? And what does it mean to speak of the past when its
hold on the present is inescapable?
Through Anthony Quinn's signature gifts - period subtlety, intricate characterisation
and storytelling verve this triptych novel melds three families and three centuries into a
single vision of human frailty and longing.
