"A gem of a story" (Laura Moriarty) about the famed Barbizon Hotel in which three spirited young women form an unlikely friendship and come of age in 1955 New York.
For a small-town girl with big-city dreams, there is no address more glamorous than New York's Barbizon Hotel. Laura, a patrician beauty from Smith, arrives to work at Mademoiselle for the summer. Her hopelessly romantic roommate, Dolly, comes from a working-class upstate town to attend secretarial school. And then there's Vivian, a brash British bombshell with a disregard for the hotel's rules.
Together, the girls embark on a journey of discovery that will take them from the penthouse apartments of Park Avenue to the Beat scene of Greenwich Village to Atlantic City's Steel Pier--and into the arms of very different men who will alter their lives forever.
About the Author :
Michael Callahan is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair and the author of the novel Searching for Grace Kelly. A former deputy editor at Town & Country and Marie Claire, he has written for more than two dozen national and international publications, including ELLE, Departures, Bloomberg Businessweek, the Hollywood Reporter, and the New York Times. He lives in Philadelphia.
Review :
"Thanks to Callahan's flawless evocation of the place and time, you understand how high the stakes are for these women, who have to break every rule their mothers taught them to discover who they really are." --More "Perfect for your next girls' night." --Good Housekeeping "Callahan, who has convincingly researched the era. . .writes page-turning prose and gets the characters' big arcs right." --ELLE "You'll rip through this novel, inspired by Grace Kelly's pre-princess Barbizon stay." --Marie Claire "Callahan's debut is a delight."--People Magazine "Michael Callahan weaves together the lives of three young women who discover Beat New York City while dorming at the famed Barbizon Hotel--sorority of sorts that brought up some of the city's most storied starlets-to-be and housed the cultural hub that was Stork Club--in a novel we won't be putting down." --Harper's Bazaar "Pour yourself a highball and settle in: Searching is a fun, frothy romp through time." --Manhattan Magazine "The New York of the 1950s shines through Callahan's pages. His characters' breathless excitement with their new lives pulls you into that time and place, and his deft plotting holds you there." --New York Times Book Review "[A] deliciously stylish, retro first novel. . .As each woman becomes entangled with mysterious, even dangerous men, Callahan suavely combines literary finesse and pulp fiction to create a fast-moving, heartwrenching tale of romance and tragedy in a time of tyrannically sexist social conventions." --Booklist "Callahan's debut novel truly captures glamorous New York City from young women's perspective in the 1950s. For aficionados of anything from the Fifties and the movie The Best of Everything (1959)." --Library Journal "Callahan has a knack for nailing the perfect detail to take a reader back to a particular time and place; this story of three spirited young women is full of the glamour of New York City's Barbizon Hotel in 1955. The dialogue sings, and the pacing was perfect. It's a gem of a story." --Laura Moriarty, New York Times bestselling author of The Chaperone "A wonderful champagne bubble of a book--glamorous, aspirational, and relatable! The fifties never seemed so fun! Wicked, naughty and clever." --Melissa de la Cruz, New York Times bestselling author of Witches of East End "This tale of big dreams, drop-dead glamour and fragile hearts will have you turning pages late into the night. Michael Callahan tells the timeless story of three very different young women on the cusp of discovering themselves, inventively set at that midcentury moment in New York City when what it meant to be a woman began to change in ways great and small. Suspenseful, sharp and romantic, I loved every minute of it." --Piper Kerman, bestselling author of Orange is the New Black "Reading Searching for Grace Kelly is like watching your favorite old Hollywood movie, filled with colorful characters, funny moments, tender scenes and plenty of intrigue. I was completely charmed by this book!" --John Searles, bestselling author of Help for the Haunted "A fascinating joy-ride through 1955 Manhattan, Searching for Grace Kelly is the Mad Men of the world of the Barbizon." --Lynn Cullen, bestselling author of Mrs. Poe.
