Before picking up Vanishing Point, I hadn’t heard of the 19th-century western Pennsylvanian painter George Hetzel. A quick Google search revealed what I’d been missing: He specialized in detailed, bucolic, and lush landscapes. According to her acknowledgements, author Ellen Prentiss Campbell was also a stranger to his work when she was moved by his paintings at the Southern Alleghenies Museum of Art, began extensive research, and penned this historical novel.

Vanishing Point wends over 100 years, following George and his family — wife Mary Louise and children Charles, Ella, Jimmie, Frank, and Lila — and the next two generations, centering Lila and her daughter, Dorothy. The reader’s journey starts with a 1977 prologue from the point of view of Dorothy, who’s managing George’s remaining paintings at the Hetzel family home in Pennsylvania. Quickly, we travel back to 1880, concentrating on George and his young family, and then through subsequent generations, back to Dorothy and a bit beyond.

George never gained the fame that he felt he deserved. Well-regarded in Pittsburgh and surrounding areas, he was the father of the Scalp Level School of painting, so-named for an area of Pennsylvania where brush and trees had been “scalped level.” Eclipsed by the Hudson River School of New York, his reception in Philadelphia was underwhelming, and he preferred feeling like a “big fish in a small pond” in Pittsburgh.

Early in the novel, the family is devastated when two of the five Hetzel children are killed in a train accident. Jimmie, gravely injured in the crash, drinks and takes laudanum to dull his pain — both literal and mental. Lila, the youngest and the protagonist of later chapters, blames herself due to a fight with Ella prior to the train ride. Mary Louise turns inward, feeling lonely in her marriage and with her remaining children. This is the most compelling section of the novel, diving deeply as it does into the family’s pain and its attempts to recover from such a profound loss.

In the meantime, Lila inherits George’s artistic talent. She begs to attend the local Women’s School of Art and Design, where George is an instructor. Despite his encouragement of other female artists, he tries to dissuade his daughter. “Marry a rich boy,” he advises. Of the graduates from his school, he tells her, “maybe one or two will make it.” Mary Louise, however, is adamant that Lila pursue her passion, so the girl enters the school at the early age of 16 and proves herself outside her father’s shadow.

As the years progress, the family struggles together and separately, each member making sacrifices for the good of the rest. The adult Lila moves to the country and notes that “family is more important than ambition” and that “she must step off the ladder just as she began to climb it.” She becomes “Miss Lila,” in part because of her diminutive height. Her art is never as widely loved as her father’s, and she paints small family-oriented scenes that she calls “corners” because they fit in tiny places. Both she and her brother Jimmie struggle in their personal lives, and Lila ends up a single parent to Dorothy.

Overall, the novel tells a compelling story about a fascinating family and raises excellent questions about the balance between artistic and family life. But because it covers so many years — and perhaps because of the writing style — the book sometimes feels like a march through the Hetzels’ photo album, with actions recounted but not explored. The final section carries less emotional weight than the first half of the novel, with some characters introduced only at the end, leaving little impact on the reader.

And every character has the same clipped speech pattern: “Thinking about Dad. Have to go back to the hotel, get some work done.” This may be an effort to capture western Pennsylvanian parlance, but since the characters all speak this way, it has the effect of flattening them. Even the narrative itself is quite clipped: “Was on the brink of lifting her in his arms, carrying her to the chaise…Complete the test he’d failed at the brothel in Troy, his friends laughing in the hall.” The style distracts from the novel’s substance.

If you’re a reader who loves learning about artists and their lives, and who enjoys a multigenerational family tale, Vanishing Point may be for you. Nevertheless, it would’ve benefited from some editing of the final sections, as well as from a few stylistic adjustments.

Julie Barrie Buchanan is an almost-lifetime Washingtonian. She majored in English at the University of Rochester and earned her JD from Georgetown Law. Having practiced law at Patton Boggs, the Federal Communications Commission, and pro bono for several nonprofit organizations while raising a marvelous daughter, she is now in her “third act”: pursuing her lifetime dream as an MFA student in creative writing at American University.