From the acclaimed writer whose first novel , Private Altars,, comes a story of driving lyrical force set in Manhattan in the 1950s.When he is expelled from boarding school, Gabriel Gibbs is sent to live with his older brother Spencer in New York. Rather than a punishment, this becomes an exhilarating invitation to a dazzling world, from smoking cigars at the Plaza Hotel to weekend house parties filled with tennis and cocktails. It is in this heady atmosphere--from white-gloved Park Avenue to literary Greenwich Village--that Gabriel first glimpses the elusive Lillian Dawes. Free-sp...

Award-winning novelist Katherine Mosby examines the complex landscape of adultery while depicting a woman's unlikely blossoming in the face of war. Lavinia Gibbs defies social convention and family expectations in New York in the 1930s when she breaks off a passionless engagement to a prominent banker. Instead of surrendering to an invisible spinsterhood, Lavinia moves to Paris, where, on the verge of World War II, her sexual and political awakening collide in an unforgettable tale.