The Secret of the Muse tells the story of two young women whose lives are fatefully intertwined through a painting: Olive, a talented painter on the eve of the Spanish Civil War, and Odelle, an aspiring writer in Swinging Sixties London. London, 1967. Odelle Bastien, who has come from Trinidad to England to pursue her dream of writing, lands a job at the prestigious Skelton art gallery. A sensational discovery—a painting by the artist Isaac Robles, who has been missing since the Spanish Civil War—draws Odelle into a story that turns her life completely upside down. For the painting is shrouded in a consequential secret that dates back to 1936, when Olive Schloss, a gifted young painter, meets the artist and revolutionary Isaac Robles in Andalusia. An encounter that has unforeseen consequences.