The End of the Vodka

A Frida Kahlo painting, a scandal, and secrets that threaten to change the course of history.

In 1938, showgirl-turned-socialite Dorothy Hale falls from a Manhattan skyscraper. Her friend Clare Boothe Luce – writer, diplomat and rising political figure – commissions Frida Kahlo to paint a memorial portrait. Months later, reporting from Europe, Clare encounters the Duchess of Windsor in Paris and begins to question what really happened that night.

In New York, Frida, estranged from Diego Rivera, wrestles with betrayal, ambition and the demands of her art. As she works on the painting that will become one of her most unsettling, she edges closer to the truth. At the heart of this novel lies a real-life mystery: was Dorothy Hale’s death an act of despair, or something far more dangerous, entangled with the power struggles shaping the modern world?