Cora Carlisle is a 30 something Witchita woman who decides to take it upon herself to accompany a young Louise Brooks to New York City for the summer in 1922. Cora is married and has twin sons away for the summer so she thinks why not?
That is the premise for the first part of the novel. Laura Moriarty (The Center of Everything- a wicked good coming of age story if there ever was one) weaves a historical tale of the early 1900's and what it means to be a woman who has a past to figure out and a present to take advantage of.
Cora chaperones a saucy little Louise Brooks who attends a special dancing school and gets picked to move forward with it. Cora is a woman who we find out was adopted and her ulterior motive for going to New York is to find out about her birth parents.
The two stories are told throughout the novel and although it was interesting to hear about Louise and what Moriarty imagines a young starlet to be like (drinking, staying out late, multiple marriage etc) it was way more intriguing to hear about Cora. How she met her husband in the aftermath of losing her foster parents and how she found a secret of her husbands and why she chose to stay with him anyway.
I loved Moriarty's Center of Everything and expected to like this one as well. I wasn't let down but I do have to say the last 50 pages or so were someone anticlimactic but I wouldn't hesitate recommending this as a good beach read. It's not light and it's always fun to take an adventure though the past with a heroin with an agenda of her own. Cora has some secrets and it's not all prim and proper lady etiquette of an upstanding woman of the 20's and 30's.
As for Louise...well she's not all that likable but she shows what unsolved issues and a desire to be promiscuous will
I think I've read 3 of the author's books and I loved every one of them. I thought this book was fabulous!
ReplyDeleteCleo Rogers (Puyallup Plumbing)