Stevie‘s review of White Collar Girl by Renee Rosen
Historical Fiction published by NAL 03 Nov 15
I love finding stories set in times and places I know little about, particularly when they manage to convey a strong feel for the era and location. I’ve seen little of the recent crop of TV shows set in the US during the 1950s, and while I’ve seen a few contemporary series and films from that decade, most of those were told from a heavily male perspective. I also enjoyed Rosen’s previous novels, so that was another incentive to dive into this one.
Jordan Walsh is keen to keep up her family’s tradition of writing for a living, even though neither of her parents have had much of an income from their work since the death of Jordan’s brother in a hit-and-run accident. Before that tragedy, their father was a journalist – at one point a famous war correspondent – while their mother was a poet and teacher, who knew some of the early feminist writers. Then there’s their hanging out with some of the great US authors of the period and giving Jordan a deliberately ambiguous name to help her forge a successful career on her own merits.
When Jordan finally lands a newspaper job, however, she’s relegated to the society pages and to writing lightweight pieces aimed at women in lower status office jobs. Undaunted she tries to find bigger stories, even as her male colleges and her bosses do everything they can to discourage her or to prevent her name being appended to the work she’s done.
I love that Jordan refuses to give up, even when her parents are too wrapped up in their own grief to encourage her, or when her boyfriend and his family start pressuring her to conform to their way of doing things. Jordan wants to be accepted by a more conventional family than her own, but doesn’t like the conditions that begin to get attached to her welcome.
Slowly, but surely, Jordan learns more and more about the corruption behind Chicago’s great institutions and is able to put together scraps of evidence indicating that her brother’s death might not have been the accident the police claim it was. I love the multifaceted characters and the vivid picture we’re given of Chicago in the late 1950s and early 1960s, but feel that the ending to some of the main plot threads is a little too rushed.
Overall, though, another great story from an author I need to keep following, whatever era she writes about.
Grade: B
Summary:
The latest novel from the bestselling author of Dollface and What the Lady Wants takes us deep into the tumultuous world of 1950s Chicago where a female journalist struggles with the heavy price of ambition…
Every second of every day, something is happening. There’s a story out there buried in the muck, and Jordan Walsh, coming from a family of esteemed reporters, wants to be the one to dig it up. But it’s 1955, and the men who dominate the city room of the Chicago Tribune have no interest in making room for a female cub reporter. Instead Jordan is relegated to society news, reporting on Marilyn Monroe sightings at the Pump Room and interviewing secretaries for the White Collar Girl column.
Even with her journalistic legacy and connections to luminaries like Mike Royko, Nelson Algren, and Ernest Hemingway, Jordan struggles to be taken seriously. Of course, that all changes the moment she establishes a secret source inside Mayor Daley’s office and gets her hands on some confidential information. Now careers and lives are hanging on Jordan’s every word. But if she succeeds in landing her stories on the front page, there’s no guarantee she’ll remain above the fold….
Read an excerpt.
