1900: Adele Bloch-Bauer-young, beautiful, brilliant, and Jewish-meets the modern painter Gustav Klimt in turn-of-the-century Vienna when sex, art, and anti-Semitism are just beginning to break through the facade of conventional society. Her intoxicating vulnerability and intensity fuel a love triangle that threatens her world, even as it ignites the creation of Klimt's greatest works: Judith, the blood-lusty femme fatale; the Portrait of Adele in gold, and the voluptuous Kiss.
But political hatred is brewing. A hungry young artist haunts Vienna's streets and museums, and his name is Adolf Hitler.
1938: Maria Altmann is a love-struck newlywed when the Nazis invade Austria, and overnight, her beloved Vienna becomes a war zone. When her husband is arrested and her family is forced out of their beautiful, stately home on the Ringstrasse, Maria must summon a courage she never knew she possessed-and faces impossible risks in order to preserve the legacy of heroism and brilliance that her aunt, the renowned Adele Bloch-Bauer, instilled in her.
Twining the tales of two remarkable women across more than a hundred years, Stolen Beauty juxtaposes passion and discovery against hatred and despair, and shines a light on our ability to love, to destroy, and above all, to endure.