Dutton
July 2017
On Sale: July 11, 2017
Featuring: Darby McLaughlin; Rose Lewin
368 pages ISBN: 1101985011 EAN: 9781101985014 Trade Size Add to Wish List
Fiona Davisβs stunning debut novel pulls readers into the lush world of New York Cityβs glamorous Barbizon Hotel for Women, where a generation of aspiring models, secretaries, and editors lived side-by-side while attempting to claw their way to fairy-tale success in the 1950s, and where a present-day journalist becomes consumed with uncovering a dark secret buried deep within the Barbizonβs glitzy past.
When she arrives at the famed Barbizon Hotel in 1952, secretarial school enrollment in hand, Darby McLaughlin is everything her modeling agency hall mates arenβt: plain, self-conscious, homesick, and utterly convinced she doesnβt belongβa notion the models do nothing to disabuse. Yet when Darby befriends Esme, a Barbizon maid, sheβs introduced to an entirely new side of New York City: seedy downtown jazz clubs where the music is as addictive as the heroin thatβs used there, the startling sounds of bebop, and even the possibility of romance.
Over half a century later, the Barbizonβs gone condo and most of its long-ago guests are forgotten. But rumors of Darbyβs involvement in a deadly skirmish with a hotel maid back in 1952 haunt the halls of the building as surely as the melancholy music that floats from the elderly womanβs rent-controlled apartment. Itβs a combination too intoxicating for journalist Rose Lewin, Darbyβs upstairs neighbor, to resistβnot to mention the perfect distraction from her own imploding personal life. Yet as Roseβs obsession deepens, the ethics of her investigation become increasingly murky, and neither woman will remain unchanged when the shocking truth is finally revealed.
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