Excerpt from This Is How It Begins by Joan Dempsey, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

"No evidence of covering," said Will. "Let's go with the two studios theory."

"There's a synagogue. …" Sophie seemed surprised she had spoken aloud, and glanced at Ludka, who nodded at her to go on. "But there isn't a church?"

"Why do you think synagogue and not church?"

"Because it's a Jewish neighborhood," said Will.

"Or maybe," said Sophie, tentatively, "Mr. Roslan was anti-Christian? It's not uncommon."

"I can see that," said Ashley, a chunky girl who excelled at oil portraits.

"I know, right?" said Sophie. "I don't really see any evidence of God, do you?" Her hand strayed again to her neck. Ashley gravely shook her head.

"God?" said Will. "Seriously?"

"Well, there's no joy. Anywhere."

"What's joy got to do with God?" said Will. "So they're not joyful, so what? Would you be? It was 1939. They were about to get the crap bombed out of them. It's got to be about the church's collusion with the Nazis. That Rome turned away from the Jewish people, and, by the way, from the gypsies and Poles and mentally ill and disabled and,"—here Will drew quotes in the air— "homosexuals. So, no church. But not no God."

Bravo, thought Ludka.

"But not all Christians colluded, right?" said Sophie. "So it's got to be more about Mr. Roslan's perspective? I think maybe we should consider that he might have wanted to paint a city without Christians. He was a Jew, right? And the Jews did kill Jesus."

"Seriously!" said Will.

Ludka felt a quickening near her heart, the flush of a once too-familiar adrenaline. She pulled the wool shawl farther down onto her shoulders and thought about returning to the bench. Why had she worn quarter-length sleeves on such a cold February day?

"And there are homosexuals," said Sophie, lifting her chin towards the painting. She said "homosexuals" as if the word tasted bad.

"Meaning?" said Will. He considered the painting. "Those two guys? Seriously? I would have said scholars, but as you like it."

"I don't like it. I just noticed it."

Ludka pulled the shawl more tightly around her.

"Who has something else to notice? From the rest of you, I'd like to hear."

She hurried back to sit on the bench. She fruitlessly tugged her sleeves down past her elbows, marveling again that these were her forearms, with brown and reddish splotches daubed along the length of her papery skin. Only the pale underbelly, with parallel aqua veins running from her wrist to the crook of her elbow, was a ghost of the color of the fair skin she thought of as her own.

Ashley sidled over towards Sophie, the scuffing of her boots resounding in the cavernous space. She smiled shyly, and laid her hand for a long moment on Sophie's shoulder, an unusually intimate and uncommon gesture for two strangers this early in the semester. This didn't raise Ludka's suspicions at the time, overshadowed as it was by Sophie's distasteful tone when she spat out "homosexuals," but later she would remember how easily and instinctively they'd joined forces and cite it as the moment in which she began to have concerns about them both.

What Ludka admired most about Prelude,1939 was that it captured the insularity of the people, the way they had so clearly huddled into themselves, individually or with one or two loved ones. There was no eye contact among any of them, not one glance, with one notable exception—the poor busker searched the faces of the passersby, pleading for even the briefest of connections. He got nowhere, and to Ludka's mind his raised bow, jaunty with hope and forever suspended above his tilted, empty case, was the epicenter of the whole tragic painting.



Will asked if he could escort Ludka back to her office, and when they arrived, the art department's administrative assistant flagged Ludka down as she unlocked her door.

Excerpted from This Is How It Begins by Joan Dempsey. Copyright © 2017 by Joan Dempsey. Excerpted by permission of She Writes Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.