Enter the lush world of 1950s New York City, where a generation of
aspiring models, secretaries, and editors live side by side in the
glamorous Barbizon Hotel for Women while attempting to claw their way to
fairy-tale success in this debut novel from the New York Times
bestselling author of The Lions of Fifth Avenue.
"Rich both in twists and period detail, this tale of big-city ambition
is impossible to put down."--People
When she arrives at the famed Barbizon Hotel in 1952, secretarial school
enrollment in hand, Darby McLaughlin is everything her modeling agency
hall mates aren't: plain, self-conscious, homesick, and utterly
convinced she doesn't belong--a notion the models do nothing to
disabuse. Yet when Darby befriends Esme, a Barbizon maid, she's
introduced to an entirely new side of New York City: seedy downtown jazz
clubs where the music is as addictive as the heroin that's used there,
the startling sounds of bebop, and even the possibility of romance.
Over half a century later, the Barbizon's gone condo and most of its
long-ago guests are forgotten. But rumors of Darby's 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
woman's rent-controlled apartment. It's a combination too intoxicating
for journalist Rose Lewin, Darby's upstairs neighbor, to resist--not to
mention the perfect distraction from her own imploding personal life.
Yet as Rose's obsession deepens, the ethics of her investigation become
increasingly murky, and neither woman will remain unchanged when the
shocking truth is finally revealed.
