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Vanishing Point
A painting sparked the dream that became Vanishing Point. It was love at first sight when Ellen encountered an idyllic landscape by George Hetzel in a museum about an hour from her summer home in rural southwestern Pennsylvania. Completely unfamiliar with the artist, she learned Hetzel was a renowned 19th century Pittsburgh landscape painter, teacher, and founder of the regional Scalp Level School of artists.
Startled by her immediate connection to the painting, curious, and sensing the seed of a novel, she visited archives in museums and libraries in Pittsburgh, Westmoreland and Somerset counties, and the family’s final home in Somerset where they moved as the artist’s health and popularity declined.
Ellen uncovered and pieced together an intriguing family story: a mixture of light and shadow, profound love as well as bitter conflict and misunderstanding. She also discovered close-held family secrets and mysteries which had never been explained.
In Vanishing Point Ellen weaves together what is known and what can only be imagined, creating a compelling, fictionalized tale told over three generations by several family voices. Vanishing Point reveals the personal struggles of the entire family, particularly his youngest child Lila, and her daughter Dorothy. Long after George’s death, Lila — a gifted, trained painter — and Dorothy, a journalist, struggle to protect the beauty of the Pennsylvania woodlands George Hetzel loved, to preserve his artistic legacy, and strive to achieve their own personal aspirations as creative women.
Vanishing Point is a story of love and ambition, heartbreak and success, secret shame, and the exquisite tension between family and achievement.
Interior by Lila Hetzel
Two Boys Swimming in a Mountain Stream by George Hetzel
Hetzel images courtesy of the Westmoreland Museum of American Art
Praise
“As all Pittsburghers know, Homewood Cemetery is full of stories. Here Ellen Prentiss Campbell unearths not one but three, piecing together the fascinating yet little-known saga of the Hetzels. Vanishing Point is a smart, sharp historical novel that combines the shifting mores of art and the changing fortunes of one extraordinary American family.
–Stewart O’Nan, author of Emily, Alone and Evensong
“Gorgeous Historical Fiction!”
-GP Gottlieb, New Books in Literature Podcast
“George Hetzel, a painter of portraits and landscapes, a historical figure whom Campbell vividly imagines…offers this painterly wisdom to his youngest child, who’s inherited his gift. ‘Remember, Lila. Look hard. Look deep. Fix it in your mind. Then it’s yours to go back to.’ Campbell has taken George Hetzel’s advice, looking hard, looking deep, giving us images and voices that are fixed in our minds so that they’re there to go back to…a world that doesn’t vanish once it’s gone.”
– Douglas Bauer, author of The Beckoning World
“Campbell’s atmospheric historical novel, a captivating examination of artist George Hetzel’s Scalp Level School in southwestern Pennsylvania, is an unflinching look at the complex family dynamics behind his love for the observed natural world. The real stars here, daughter Lila and granddaughter Dorothy, reveal the struggles and sacrifices of women artists.”
- – Sherrie Flick, author of I Have Not Considered Consequences
“A book that courageously sets before us the pain of living, the impossible choices of family, of longing and disappointment, of cruelty inflicted and deep, deep loyalty. And the inevitable consequences of character and drive. It’s astonishing.”
– Judy Karasik, Co-author of The Ride Together: A Brother and Sister’s Memoir of Autism in the Family
“Vanishing Point is a three-generation long ride, with loads of characters, much loss, and bales of love.”
– Dorothy Reno, writer and columnist for The Washington Independent Review of Books
“Ellen Prentiss Campbell’s Vanishing Point, a beautifully written story of the George Hetzel family, is emotionally complex, compelling, and evocative of the Western Pennsylvania region. Life’s pleasures juxtaposed with tragedy made this novel impossible to put down until the last page.”
– Kris Schaale, author of Summer of Meteors
“I love the topic – the dismissal of women artists, the shadow of the famous father, the way social mores and family patterns crimped the women in later generations. A wonderful book!”
– Donna Baier Stein, author of The Silver Baron’s Wife
“With elegance, precision, and insight, Ellen Prentiss Campbell tells the gripping story of three generations of the Hetzel family, its heartbreaking tragedies and celebrated successes…Campbell beautifully portrays the structured world of the late nineteenth century, and the changes the twentieth century brought. Vanishing Point shines with vibrant characters, emotion, and depth.”
- – Ronna Wineberg, author of Artifacts and Other Stories
