When her Theodora Tenpenny spills a bottle of rubbing alcohol on her late grandfather’s painting, she discovers what seems to be an Old Master painting underneath. That’s great news for Theo, who’s struggling to hang onto her family’s two-hundred-year-old Greenwich Village townhouse and support her unstable mother on her grandfather’s legacy of $463. There’s just one problem: her grandfather was a security guard at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Theo worries the painting may be stolen. With the help of some unusual new friends, Theo’s search for answers takes her all around New York City, and introduces her to a side of the city—and her grandfather—that she never knew. To solve the mystery, she’ll have to abandon her hard-won self-reliance and build a community, one serendipitous friendship at a time.
About the Author
Laura Marx Fitzgerald is a longtime copywriter. In writing Under the Egg, she drew on her study of art history at Harvard and Cambridge Universities. Her non-fiction gift book, If at First: How Great People Turned Setbacks Into Great Success, was published by Andrews McMeel in 2004. This is her middle grade debut.
