On Sale: Oct 20, 2026
Publisher: Hachette Audio
ISBN-13: 9781668659656

$27.99

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A sweeping and cinematic narrative history that follows Renoir’s La Petite Irène, tracing its theft from one of Paris’s wealthiest Jewish families during WWII and examining the legacy of the little girl who sat for the painting.

In 1941, a specialized unit of Nazi art looters raided the castle of Chambord in the Loire Valley and stole one of Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s most gorgeous and evocative masterworks: La Petite Irène. It was one of thousands of artworks stolen during the Occupation from 1940 to 1944. The portrait would enchant or curse nearly everyone who coveted it, but the living, breathing girl it depicted slipped into a crevice of history. This is her story.

Initially titled The Little Girl with the Blue Ribbon, Renoir captured the likeness of the young Irène Cahen d’Anvers—the daughter of one of Paris’s wealthiest Jewish families—in the summer of 1880 with luminous strokes, achieving a lasting impression of resignation in her light, blue-green eyes. In later years, the painting’s title evolved to, simply, La Petite Irène. But during that time, Irène life was anything but simple. She grew to be independent and rebellious, abandoning her religion and her wealthy, much older husband to marry a titled count who was the family’s stable master and horse trainer.

By breaking with family tradition and the conventions of her time, Irène set her life on a defiant course. The Girl in Blue recovers her forgotten story while tracing the shadowy journey of La Petite Irène—seized by the Nazis and smuggled through a murky world of dealers, intermediaries and collectors. As Irène and her family struggled to survive the Occupation and reclaim the looted portrait, the painting passed through an art market shaped by silence and corruption. Their paths converge through stories of loss and survival—the painting a witness to what history tried to erase.

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Doreen Carvajal was born and raised in California. She studied journalism as an undergraduate at The University of California at Berkeley and San Jose State University. She worked as a journalist for the International Herald Tribune and The New York Times and other publications for more than 25 years, covering a myriad of topics. Her first book, The Forgetting River, was about her search to recover her Catholic family's hidden Sephardic Jewish roots in a mystical white pueblo on Spain's southern frontier in Andalusia.

Doreen Carvajal

About the Author

Doreen Carvajal was born and raised in California. She studied journalism as an undergraduate at The University of California at Berkeley and San Jose State University. She worked as a journalist for the International Herald Tribune and The New York Times and other publications for more than 25 years, covering a myriad of topics. Her first book, The Forgetting River, was about her search to recover her Catholic family’s hidden Sephardic Jewish roots in a mystical white pueblo on Spain’s southern frontier in Andalusia.

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