Here is a vivid, poetic, and evocative story of the painter Vincent van Goghs struggle to become his true self. The author listens in on Vincents most intimate, frequently startling thoughts on a host of topics, drawn from three volumes of his correspondence and his 900 extant paintings. What emerges is the portrait of an artist whose spiritual vision was borne of an agonizingly prolonged experience of the ""dark night of the soul"" through which his art dared to envision the triumph of joy over sorrow, of resurrection over suffering and death.

Readers will discover that in many ways...