Using the famous painting by Vermeer as an inspiration, A Girl With a Pearl Earring is a brilliant historical novel about the corruption of innocence, Griet, the young daughter of a tilemaker in seventeeth century Holland, obtains her first job as a servant in Vermeer's household. Tracy Chevalier shows us through Griet's eyes, the complicated family, the society of the small town of Delft, and life with an obsessive genius. Griet loves being drawn into his artistic life and leaving her former drudgery, but the cost to her own survival may be high . . .