The extraordinary story of Edmonia Lewis

Mary Edmonia Lewis (1844-1907) was a neoclassical sculptor of Black-Indigenous parentage who gained international renown in the late 19th century yet fell into obscurity decades later. Alongside a recent artistic revival, her life and work should get a deserving boost through Baker’s eloquent biographical novel.

Pub. by Dafina/Kensington, April 2026 (288pp)

Her imagined first-person voice makes a statement. With cool, deliberate pacing and an exalted vocabulary, Edmonia reveals her extraordinary story, from her childhood in northern New York, where she wove baskets with her Ojibwe aunts for tourists, through the height of professional achievement in Rome, where she settled after tiring of racist treatment in her birth country.

Much about Lewis remains shadowy even today. And so, while anchored in the historical record, Baker’s tale includes fictional episodes for dramatic purposes and to fill in gaps.

The most unusual events in the narrative really did happen. After attending New York Central College through the financial support of anti-slavery Baptists, the teenager then known as Mary enrolls at Oberlin College in Ohio, where she endures sniffy racial attitudes and is brought to trial for poisoning two female students. Baker’s explanations for this shocking accusation make logical sense, as does Mary’s decision to use the middle name she was given in baptism, Edmonia, after moving to Boston to start afresh.

Edmonia Lewis, ca. 1870. By Henry Rocher
Adam Cuerden - National Portrait Gallery (United States)

A detailed author’s note would have been beneficial, but one could hazard a guess that some secondary characters and unlikely coincidences involving them were invented. What feels entirely real, though, is Edmonia’s strength of will. She is bold, uncompromising, occasionally prickly (even with her benefactors), confident in her abilities, and determined to elevate and showcase the humanity of her people by sculpting them in marble. What a force she must have been. Edmonia brings to life a woman who refused to be defined by anyone but herself.

This review, cross-posted to the Historical Novel Society website, was based on my reading of a NetGalley copy. I had included Edmonia in my preview of spring/summer 2026 novels, and it didn’t disappoint in the least. The novel has only a few dozen Amazon reviews, so it seems to be flying under the radar (I would contribute one myself, but Amazon doesn’t seem to like me posting reviews there).

Edmonia Lewis was the focus of an exhibition at the Peabody-Essex Museum that ran from Feb-June 2026, and an interview with the curator (on YouTube) is still posted at the PEM website. The exhibition has since traveled to the Georgia Museum of Art at the University of Georgia, so if you’re in the vicinity of Athens (Georgia, that is) between now and next January, it looks very much worth checking out. Many photos of Lewis’s sculptures are posted at the museum website.