"The Seamstress of Hollywood Boulevard" by Erin McGraw
(from back cover)
Trapped in Kansas at the turn of the twentieth century, Nell Plat is seventeen, unhappily married, and the mother of two baby girls. No realiity could be further from her secret dreams of glamor and excitement, dreams that tmpt her to do the unthinkable: she runs way to the woderland of Los Angels and its burgeoning motion picture industry.
Nell becomes Madame Annelle, costumer to glittering Hollywood in the Roaring Twenties. But a knock on the door threatens to rip apart the seams of her own carefully consturcted costume, and Nell is forced to confront the legacy of her abandonment and deception. Can she rework the delicate fabric of her life?
MY THOUGHTS: This book is about starting over. Turning your life into something that it wasn't and once you have that, the consequences of that decision. Nell is a young girl with nothing in sight except marriage and children. She lives in a shoddy on the parries of Kansas. Her only hope of getting out of the life she doesn't want is to runaway. She has her second child within a year of the first and can't see the end of the road coming to any good. Nell leaves her two babies behind and heads for California. The only thing Nell knows how to do well is sew. As Nell gets customers to sew for and builds up her clientele, she meets George and falls in love. She and George want a child, but Nell doesn't think she can a child again after the botched birth of her second child she left in Kansas. But Nell does get pregnant and Mary is born. When everything is going along great, Nell's past comes knocking at her door. Now she has to reveal everything to George and hope it all woks out. Will it work out? You'll have to read the book to find out.
This seems like just the ticket for an afternoon of escape! Thanks for the great [and intriguing] review. It's one of my favorite places and eras, and even occupations! Sounds like a winner -- I think I'd better track down a copy! LOL
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