Erika Robuck is the national bestselling author of The House of Hawthorne, Fallen Beauty, Call Me Zelda, Hemingway’s Girl, and Receive Me Falling. She is a contributor to the fiction blog Writer Unboxed, and she maintains her own blog, Muse. She is a member of the Hawthorne Society, the Hemingway Society, the Historical Novel Society, and the Edna St. Vincent Millay Society. She lives in Annapolis, Maryland, with her husband and three sons.
Fallen Beauty
by Erika Robuck
Paperback
- ISBN-13: 9780451418906
- Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
- Publication date: 03/04/2014
- Pages: 384
- Sales rank: 231,555
- Product dimensions: 5.40(w) x 8.20(h) x 1.00(d)
- Age Range: 18Years
What People are Saying About This
.
“Without sin, can we know beauty? Can we fully appreciate the summer without the winter? No, I am glad to suffer so I can feel the fullness of our time in the light.”
Upstate New York, 1928. Laura Kelley and the man she loves sneak away from their judgmental town to attend a performance of the scandalous Ziegfeld Follies. But the dark consequences of their night of daring and delight reach far into the future.…
That same evening, Bohemian poet Edna St. Vincent Millay and her indulgent husband hold a wild party in their remote mountain estate, hoping to inspire her muse. Millay declares her wish for a new lover who will take her to unparalleled heights of passion and poetry, but for the first time, the man who responds will not bend completely to her will.…
Two years later, Laura, an unwed seamstress struggling to support her daughter, and Millay, a woman fighting the passage of time, work together secretly to create costumes for Millay’s next grand tour. As their complex, often uneasy friendship develops amid growing local condemnation, each woman is forced to confront what it means to be a fallen woman…and to decide for herself what price she is willing to pay to live a full life.
“Lovers of the Jazz Age, literary enthusiasts, and general historic fiction readers will find much to love about Call Me Zelda. Highly recommended.” –Historical Novel Society, Editors’ Choice
Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought
-
- Call Me Zelda
- by Erika Robuck
-
- Hemingway's Girl
- by Erika Robuck
-
- Madam: A Novel of New Orleans
- by Cari LynnKellie Martin
-
- I Always Loved You: A Novel
- by Robin Oliveira
-
- The Vatican Princess: A Novel…
- by C. W. Gortner
-
- The Daughters of Mars
- by Thomas Keneally
-
- A Future Arrived: A Novel
- by Phillip Rock
-
- My Notorious Life: A Novel
- by Kate Manning
-
- Abundance: A Novel of Marie…
- by Sena Jeter Naslund
-
- The Poisoned Crown
- by Maurice Druon
-
- Letters from Skye
- by Jessica Brockmole
-
- Newport: A Novel
- by Jill Morrow
-
- Mrs. Hemingway: A Novel
- by Naomi Wood
-
- The Gates of Rutherford
- by Elizabeth Cooke
-
- The Boleyn Deceit (Boleyn…
- by Laura Andersen
Recently Viewed
Videos
“Robuck's winning mix of imaginative storytelling and historical research makes for a gripping tale. Fallen Beauty is a must-read for fans of the fascinating poet Edna St. Vincent Millay.”—J. Courtney Sullivan, New York Times bestselling author of Maine
“Erika Robuck brings the poet Edna St. Vincent Millay to life in all her beauty and insatiability. This is an electrifying read, one that crackles with passion on every page. The book reads like poetry.”—Alyson Richman, national bestselling author of The Lost Wife
“This finely tuned, lyrical novel is Robuck's strongest work to date, and destined to become an American classic.”—Simon Van Booy, award-winning author of The Illusion of Separateness
Praise for Call Me Zelda
“This gem of a novel spins a different, touching story.…You will love it, as I absolutely did.”—Tatiana de Rosnay, New York Times Bestselling Author of Sarah’s Key
“Richly imagined…an unsettling yet tender portrayal of two women inextricably bound by hope and tragedy.”—Beth Hoffman, New York Times Bestselling Author of Looking for You
“Haunting and beautifully atmospheric…brilliantly brings Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald to life in all their doomed beauty, with compelling and unforgettable results.”—Alex George, Author of A Good American
Praise for Hemingway’s Girl
“You’ll love this robust, tender story of love, grief, and survival on Key West in the 1930s…addictive.”—Jenna Blum, New York Times Bestselling Author of Those Who Save Us
“Readers will delight in the complex relationships and vivid setting.”—Publishers Weekly
“Evokes a setting of the greatest fascination...This is assured and richly enjoyable storytelling.”—Margaret Leroy, Author of The Soldier’s Wife
"Robuck's breathtaking alchemy is to put us inside the world of Hemingway and his wife Pauline, and add a bold young woman to the mix with a story uniquely her own. Dazzlingly written and impossibly moving, this novel is a supernova."—Caroline Leavitt, New York Times Bestselling Author of Pictures of You
Robuck follows her portrait of Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald's turbulent marriage (Call me Zelda, 2013) with another stormy literary portrait—Edna St. Vincent Millay and her relationships with both men and women. In this novel, the narrative voices are presented antiphonally, alternating between Millay (called by her nickname, "Vincent") and Laura Kelley, owner of a dress shop in the small town near Millay's Steepletop estate. In 1928, when the novel opens, Millay is already an established poet and in an open marriage with wealthy Dutch businessman Eugen Boissevain—though "open" is perhaps an understatement: Both Millay and her husband encourage each other to take on lovers, and for Millay, this meant women as well, including the poet Elinor Wylie. In contrast, Kelley has had one brief sexual escapade, on her 19th birthday, and now, as a single mother, is raising her daughter, Grace, in a small and generally unforgiving small town near Steepletop. While Kelley is struggling to survive economically, especially once the townspeople turn their backs on her, Millay and Eugen live a profligate and free-spirited life with friends and lovers. One day, Eugen spots Kelley and knows instinctively that Millay would enjoy wooing her, and much of the rest of the novel is taken up by Millay's advances, sometimes subtle and sometimes conspicuous. Although Kelley, whose brother-in-law has already been seduced by Millay, is not ready to engage in even more scandalous behavior, Millay is a source of lucrative dress orders that Laura finds hard to turn down. So they play an amatory game of cat-and-mouse. But for as captivating as Millay can be, her relationship with Eugen lacks drama, rendering the book less compelling than Robuck's earlier portrayal of Zelda and Scott. Well-written and insightful, with Millay in particular a fascinatingly complex character.