In 2017-18, the trustees of the Berkshire Museum in Pittsfield, Mass., decided to "deaccession" (sell) some of its most valuable artworks, including a painting by Norman Rockwell appraised at $25 million. The proposed sales broke long-established norms of museum collection oversight and sent shock waves through both the Berkshire community and the national art world. The broad outline of the events and alliances leading up to the sales form the nonfictional backdrop to this novel, an otherwise fictional story involving a cast of locals who play out their lives, loves, hopes, and fears amid the day-to-day controversy, with a murder or two thrown in for good measure.
The protagonist is a Berkshire newcomer, Olivia Slater, who arrives to do graduate work in art history at Williams College and is persuaded, somewhat against her will (she doesn't even like Rockwell), to do her first research project on the proposed sales. Before long, she is thrust into the eye of the storm, where she meets several opponents of the sale, including members of a group called Save the Art, as well as the last two holdouts among the trustees (who also happen to be having an affair). The people behind the sale, and its questionable rationale, are more elusive--and Livy becomes suspicious of kickbacks.
Meanwhile, Livy befriends a troupe of actors who are staging a whodunit in the museum's central auditorium--and falls in love with one of them. Rounding out the cast are Jinx, a witty and wily private detective; Anthony, a sociable bartender who hears all, or tries to; and Emmy, a bratty teen with thespian dreams who has to grow up fast when life throws her a curveball.
To the Highest Bidder has a little bit of everything: love, lust, betrayal, suspense, art history, a play-within-a-book, a couple of sweet first dates, walking tours of the Clark Art Institute and Tanglewood, some nifty detective work, and a powerful penultimate scene in which the killer walks into a carefully staged trap. And Livy, who has become something of an amateur detective herself, finally gets to say, "I just solved the case!"
