The warmth of this book is sustained by friendship. More specifically, the novelist Howard Norman documents what he didn't know would be the final evening and morning he spent with his dear friend Jake Berthot. In that single evening is the entire world of their relationship and the story of a unique artistic figure of the twentieth century. After the controversial exhibit of his ''Red Paintings,'' painter Jake Berthot (1939-2014) moved his studio from New York City to a small town upstate. There he began an exploration of landscape - predominantly trees - which he drew and painted almost exclusively until his death from leukemia at age 75. Berthot was often referred to as a ''painter's painter,'' a description he disliked. After tragedy struck his friend Norman's family, Berthot gave them a collection of dialogues and poems by the 13th century Sufi mystic poet Rumi. One of the poems reads: I said: What about my heart? He said: Tell me what you hold inside it I said: Pain and sorrow.
