Jane Hall began life
in an Arizona mining town. She loved the freedom and adored her
father who wrote humerus fiction for the Saturday Evening Post.
However, her father's death and the subsequent death of her mother,
sent Jane and her brother East to live with her mother's sister. The
mining town life couldn't have presented more of a contrast to the
Manhattan lifestyle of wealthy families and debutante parties.
Although Jane became
a debutante and enjoyed the glamour, she craved independence and
wanted to be successful on her own. She achieved this through writing
stories about the debutante life for Cosmopolitan. Her success led to
an offer to write for Metroo-Goldwym-Mayer where she met famous
writer and formed a friendship with F. Scott Fitzgerald.
The war
changed the public taste for light fiction, and Jane succumbed
to family pressure to marry the right man from a social perspective.
From then on, her writing suffered much to her dismay.
Robin Cutler has
done a good job bringing her mother's era to life. The major focus of
the story is on how girls, particularly from the upper and middle
classes, were pressured to become wives rather than independent career
women. The struggle to please her family, but also be independently
successful permeates Jane's story.
Although the early
chapters about Jane's life in Arizona and as a debutante move
quickly, the book loses momentum when the author describes in detail
each of Jane's literary works. The problem is that they are very
similar and the retelling becomes tedious.
I enjoyed this trip
back to the era of our parents and in some cases grandparents. The
book emphasizes how much has changed in the opportunities available
to women, but we're still our mother's daughters and often for the
older generation, the mores of the 30's drive their desires for us.
I received this book
from Net Galley for this review.
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