Three sisters live in poverty. Their father is dead and their mother is addicted to absinthe.

They have to find a way to feed themselves. The Paris Opera is an option, but ballet is expensive. There’s lessons and clothing to buy.

And whatever money they do manage to scrape together, there’s no guarantee their mother won’t use it to buy another bottle to feed her addiction.

The Painted Girls is about the haunting specter of abject poverty and addiction, but it is also about phrenology, a now-defunct science wherein experts believed they could judge the character of a person based on the shape of their head and face.

Marie, one of the girls in this story, frets because she has a low forehead and a jutting jaw. In her early religiously-based education, she was taught that outer beauty is a reflection of the soul. She fears her destiny is predetermined as hell bound because of her face.

Antoinette, the eldest of the sisters, wants to be adored and appreciated for how she holds her family together while her mother drugs herself into oblivion. But, she’s too aggressive and out-spoken to hold onto jobs for long and men can’t see past her outer shell to the aching heart within.

Plus, she sees herself as a hard worker, not a whore. Until she meets Émile Abadie and he takes her out for an evening of wine and oysters…

The Painted Girls is about art, power and the blindness of love. It is also about sisters and the love family members hold for each other.

It is a work of historical fiction for girls who actually existed. Cathy Marie Buchanan takes the time to sort the real from the fictional at the end of the story.

I felt despair for the family in this book but also hope; that they could rise out of poverty despite everything holding them back.

Because, as society now knows, it doesn’t matter what you look like on the outside. What matters most is who you love and what you chose to do each day, each moment and for what reason.

This story has possible triggers for anyone who was sexually or physically abused as a child.

Thank you for reading.

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