Shortly before longtime Point Reyes Station resident Eugenia Loyster’s death, she implored her grandson to persuade his mother to finish her novel. “’I’m not going to be around forever to nag her,’” Sara Loyster recalls her mother saying. “A couple months later, after she died, I felt like I had this little person on my shoulder telling me to get it ready.” Seven years later, Ms. Loyster’s novel, “The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit,” is out in print through She Writes Press, and the Point Reyes Library is hosting a free outdoor book talk on Thursday, Oct. 28 from 4 to 5 p.m. The young adult novel is set in the 1960s and stars a lonely and misunderstood 15-year-old Victoria. One day, standing before the famous John Singer Sargent portrait, “The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit,” Victoria is drawn into the painting, transported back to the 1880s and tasked to uncover and dispel the shadowy sexual predation that lies in the girls’ midst. Part science fiction, part coming-of-age novel and part art history lesson, the story unravels the complexities of consent and the generational effects of child sexual abuse. Through her adventures across time travel, Victoria finds agency not only within her role in the painting and history but also in her present-day life. Ms. Loyster recalls being moved by the mystery of the Sargent painting when she first viewed it in 2001. “I really wanted to step into that painting and find out what was going on,” she said.  And so began her novel and a deep dive into the history of the piece. “Getting the initial draft is difficult because you’re having to create it out of whole cloth,” she said. “It’s like a painter having to face a blank canvas: You don’t know exactly where it’s going to go. So you have to get the first draft done, but then all of the revisions are fun and delightful, like adding meat to the bones of the story and getting all the details right.” The help of local colleagues and writing groups was pivotal in her writing process. As a librarian in Contra Costa County for 24 years and in San Anselmo for 13 years, Ms. Loyster enjoyed the research involved in writing the book. “It was important to get the historical details correct,” she said. She said the villain is loosely based on Lewis Carroll, the author of “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” who liked to take pictures of nude children. “I am talking about the ugly topic of sexual predation but I’m trying to do it with a light touch and the idea of prevention,” she said. In college, Ms. Loyster studied with the Nobel Prize-winning writer Isaac Bashevis Singer. She remembers him once saying: Art is communication. If you’re not communicating to someone else, what’s the point? Although this book is for anyone who likes a good story, it’s young people Ms. Loyster wants to reach. “I want to communicate the importance of friendship,” she said. “I also want to communicate the precariousness of being a young woman in the world. There are predators out there and manipulators and the way to protect girls and young women is to educate them, not to overprotect them or make them fearful but to talk honestly about how to conduct yourself in the world and think about ways to avoid those kinds of dangers.” She also just wants the reader to be entertained, she said. As a child Ms. Loyster’s mother often drove her down from their home in Madison, Wis. to the Art Institute of Chicago. “I really loved the portraits,” she said. “How wonderful it would be for young people to look up the paintings I write about in the book…. I want to show the power of art and the stories visual art can tell.” For more on the novel and to view the paintings, visit www.saraloyster.com.