I was tasked in creating a portrait of author Joan Thomas in anticipation of the publishing of her latest book, Wild Hope. The primary image was used as a hand out image so you’ll see it in various articles and reviews of Joan’s latest novel.
Here’s a synopsis of Wild Hope
An absorbing contemporary novel about art, food, love, and the ferocious hold of the past, from the Governor General’s Award-winning author of Five Wives.
When Isla and Jake meet, their attraction to each other is irresistible. Isla loves that Jake is an artist. She’s drawn to his talent and his ideas, his unsparing self-awareness. The timing is bad, though: Isla is a chef who’s bought into an organic restaurant in farm country, and she’s just about to move. Then Jake decides to move with her. He’s eager to escape the city and the art world and his family’s long shadow, and he wants to live closer to nature. Mainly, he wants Isla, who in his mind represents all that healthy, natural, and joyful.
But Jake’s efforts to distance himself from his old life only seem to pull him forcefully back—starting from the day his former friend Reg Bevaqua rolls up to Isla’s restaurant in a preposterous supercar. When they were kids, Reg was something of a charitable project for Jake’s family. Now he’s scrambling fast into the world of the one-percenters. When Jake vanishes, Isla realizes that she should have paid closer attention to all that went down between Jake and Reg.
Wild Hope is a page-turner deepened by nuanced characters, by the pleasurable language of literary fiction, and by its keen attention to the current moment. It is interested in where greed comes from, in the scorched-earth mentality of contemporary capitalism, and in why society tolerates ludicrous inequalities. Can we change to meet the challenges of the present, Wild Hope asks, or will old patterns and values prevail?
You can read more about the new novel over on Joan’s website
You can hear Joan talk about her book here in an interview on The Next Chapter
