Painter, an eminent 64-year-old historian turned painter, heads back to school in pursuit of a new career as a serious artist, in flight from her twentieth-century eyes toward a postmodern reckoning with the market and the comparative invisibility of a black woman past middle age. An ode at times to her hometown of Newark, New Jersey; a screed at times against the callousness of The Art World and the callowness of art students; a lament for the brilliant mother and bitter father she loses on the way; a song for life indefatigable and for an imagination more powerful than youth.