Renee Rosen
Publisher: NAL, November 5, 2013
Idgie Says:
Chapter One opens with 18 year old Vera out on her own at last, her first week's wages in her pocket, liquor in her hand, listening to music at a speak-easy. By Chapter 2 she has been saved from a raid by a handsome gambler, found work modeling jewelry and again saved - this time from accused theft by another handsome scoundrel type.
So starts Vera on a life she 'thinks' she might like to live in - one of booze and jewels, pretty clothes and handsome men. But when reality hits, she soon discovers there's pretty grimy underside to all that glamor.
A fun book putting you in the heart of the 1920s. Vera is an interesting character and you definitely find yourself invested in her life and what could become of it.
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Book Description:
America in the 1920s was a country alive with the wild fun of jazz, speakeasies and a new kind of woman—the flapper.
Vera Abramowitz is determined to leave her gritty childhood
behind, and live a more exciting life, one that her mother never
dreamed of. Bobbing her hair and showing her knees, the lipsticked
beauty dazzles, doing the Charleston in nightclubs and earning the
nickname “Dollface.”
As the ultimate flapper, Vera captures the attention of two
high rollers, a handsome nightclub owner and a sexy gambler. On their
arms, she gains entree into a world filled with bootlegged bourbon,
wailing jazz and money to burn. She thinks her biggest problem is
choosing between them, until the truth comes out. Her two lovers are
really mobsters from rival gangs during Chicago’s infamous Beer Wars, a
battle Al Capone refuses to lose.
The heady life she’s living is an illusion resting on a
bedrock of crime and violence unlike anything the country has ever seen
before. When the good times come to an end, Vera becomes entangled in
everything from bootlegging to murder. And as men from both gangs fall
around her, Vera must put together the pieces of her shattered life, as
Chicago hurtles towards one of the most infamous days in its history,
the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre.