Au bonheur des filles

In 1940, nineteen-year-old Vivian Morris is unceremoniously exiled to New York City after failing out of Vassar College. Her parents send her to live with her unconventional Aunt Peg, who owns a crumbling but glamorous midtown playhouse. Thrust into a world of showgirls, vaudevillians, and stage actors, Vivian is seduced by the intoxicating freedom of the city and its charismatic inhabitants. She embraces a life of glamour, sex, and adventure, but a reckless personal mistake soon results in a professional scandal that threatens to shatter her new world.

Told from the perspective of an older woman looking back on her youth without shame, the novel follows Vivian's entire life, shaped by the events of that fateful year. It is a story about discovering that you don't have to be a good girl to be a good person and exploring the nature of true love, female desire, and the freedom it takes to become who you truly are. This journey through the glittering and gritty landscape of a bygone New York offers a unique portrait of a woman living life on her own terms.