Under the Egg by Laura Marx Fitzgerald (review)

Barely scraping by but self-reliant, thirteen-year-old Theo and her artist grandfather, Jack, spend their days tending the vegetable garden and chicken coop in the backyard of their New York City family home, trying to keep up with ever-needed repairs, and looking after Theo’s brilliant but childlike mother. After Jack’s sudden death, Theo must run the house on only a few hundred dollars while trying to make sense of her grandfather’s final words imploring her to “look under the egg.” When she accidentally spills rubbing alcohol over one of Jack’s paintings, revealing another picture beneath, she must uncover whether it’s a true Renaissance work—a Raphael, to be exact—and find its rightful owner. With the help of neighbors and new friends (including a tattooed librarian), Theo both unravels the mystery and builds a community around her. In an engaging, if rather implausible, narrative, author Fitzgerald weaves together art history, world history, and personal history, and she creates a protagonist winning for her determined and capable nature and a plot refreshing in its subject matter. The mystery is, like Agatha Christie’s, a ride-along rather than a solve-along, with the key plot point inserted just before the big reveal, but there’s plenty of the pleasure coming from watching events unfold and seeing Theo put the pieces together. This novel will please readers who enjoy a quirky and resourceful female protagonist and, ideally, share her interest in Renaissance art.