The Lost Diaries of Frans Hals — Michael Kernan

When ancient notebooks turn up in a Long Island garage, Peter Van Overloop, a Columbia graduate student, sets to translating them, and finds himself immersed in the life and times of the Dutch painter Frans Hals. for the notebooks seem to be Hal's diaries, and they contain a fascinating portrait of a man living in the age of Rembrandt and Descartes, and bursting with a lust for the world that surrounds him. Emerging as a thoroughly funny, charming man, Hals reaches out from centuries past to touch and change Peter's life forever.
A seamless merging of literary invention and historic fact, The Lost Diaries of Frans Hals is a remarkable, unforgettable novel.