Lift My Eyes

Lift My Eyes fictionally portrays the life of celebrated feminist painter Matilda Lotz. The daughter of a faithful Christian family of German immigrants, Matilda is only six when she is caught up in the bloody Battle of Franklin, only ten when she and her family are pursued by the Ku Klux Klan and forced to flee from Tennessee to California. Like Joseph sold into slavery in Egypt, no adversity can crush her. The talented young artist becomes the protege first of Penelope Hearst and later of French feminist painter Rosa Bonheur. No typical Victorian woman, she overcomes both sexism and self-doubt to paint dukes in England, counts in Hungary, and Bedouins in North Africa. She refuses to marry until fifty-five, when she falls in love with another painter, a Hungarian nobleman. But when a second war, the Great War, strips her of nearly everything, Matilda is challenged to one final battle with her own heart.