The Lost Glass Plates of Wilfred Eng

A man whose life has gone off course attempts to redeem his reputation by unraveling a mystery about a renowned landscape photographer in this thought-provoking, sophisticated first novel. Photograph dealer and art historian Robert Armour was disgraced after he unwittingly sold fake Edward Weston photographs, and when the scandal was revealed, he was forced to sell his humble yet respected San Francisco gallery. Along with his life work went his honor and self-confidence, and now he's moved to Seattle to start over, piecing together a new life haphazardly consulting, writing, lecturing and looking for romance. In the basement of his difficult, wealthy client Judith Lund, he happens upon a priceless cache of five original negatives from the work of ""one of the fathers of American photography,"" Chinese-American photographer Wilfred Eng, dated 1874. Armour sees a chance to get back in the art game, this time with the real goods. His scheme requires cunning, and ultimately scheming, as he tries to enlist the right people to get the plates out of Judith's hands without her realizing how valuable they are. Part of the value of the plates lies in their ability to confirm a long-suspected affair between Eng and Ellen McFarland, the upper-class Caucasian child bride of Eng's benefactor. Excerpts from McFarland's diaries, interspersed throughout the novel, generate little of the shocking interracial ""19th century scandal"" Orton seems to be after. A surprise is revealed in the romantic twists of fate in Ellen's life, and Eng's burden of despair buries him, if not his legacy. Orton orchestrates these histories to echo protagonist Armour's contemporary struggle with ambition, disappointments and love. The narrative, rife with penetrating images, deftly wheels between the deal making and subterfuge of the modern-day art market and a haunting 19th-century epistolary soul-searching. This is a stimulating, literate story of the corrupting or redeeming powers of both art and artifice. (Oct.) FYI: Orton manages Second Story Books in Seattle.