This HaBO request comes from Erin, who is searching for a book that may or may not be a romance:
This book may or may not be billed as a romance. It might be more in the LaVyrle Spencer historical fiction-type category. I read it sometime in the mid-late 90s, but I don’t know if it was a new book then. (I don’t think so.)
What I remember:
-The book takes place in the early 1900s. I remember a specific scene where the heroine goes to a baseball game in a striped shirtwaist and skirt, very Edwardian.
-The heroine starts on the East coast (Boston? Connecticut?) and moves to Chicago after she’s married off to some handsome young guy she’s worshipped from afar. She’s old money and he’s new money -he works for some kind of steel or railroad baron? Steel. Coal? Something like that. A baron. In Chicago. You get the idea. Fat cats, cigars, etc. It’s all very foreign to her genteel self.
-I can’t remember what happens in her marriage, I just remember it’s very much on the theme of “wide-eyed innocent gets her dreams destroyed in the scary city.”
-The thing I remember the most is the description of the heroine. She has amazingly unusual red-gold hair. No, not hair with a red-gold color: alternating strands of red and gold that combine to make the most glorious head of hair anyone has ever seen. Women think she’s vulgar, men want to possess her.
-But not just for her hair, oh no, she also has the most magnificent set of boobies the world has ever seen. They are enormous. Ponderous. SCANDALOUS. All the society women shun her. Men try to cop a feel. Her husband is distant. What is a girl to do with giant tits and magical hair?
-She is taken in by a fashion designer, who is also SCANDALOUS because he’s either explicitly or clearly coded as gay. Unfortunately, he’s the classic evil, lecherous gay stereotype, leading the innocent girl into depravity. He makes for her these gorgeous, daring, beautiful dresses that flaunt her lust-inducing hair and boobs. He constructs a new kind of corset that nobody has seen before just to manage her boobs. He makes her these Jessica Rabbit dresses (I remember there was a gold sequined one, in particular) where they barely skim her areola and expose the sides of her boobs too. The aforementioned shirtwaist is tailored so tight that she even has to wear a special corset with that. She begins to be sought after, gains acceptance, but at the cost of her dignity, blah blah.
-I don’t remember how the book ends, other than there is a riot among the workers in whatever mine or factory her husband’s employer owns, and they literally rip the gold dress off of her. I can’t remember why she was in a mine with a Jessica Rabbit dress on, but the book doesn’t make a lot of sense anyway.
I don’t know if the book spends as much time talking about garment construction as I remember, but that’s certainly what I took from it. There are definitely romance elements in terms of her relationship with her husband, but I don’t remember that as much as I remember the clothes.
If anyone can help me, I’d be so grateful; I’ve been looking for this book for about 15 years.
Fifteen years is a long time, so hopefully we can help Erin out! I also want to know why this woman was in a mine without proper attire.
I am interested in knowing this book.
Okay, this sounds gloriously sleazy. I’ll bet there are some people here who really want to know the answer to this one so as to counteract holiday syrup with some crazysauce.
I’m almost 100% sure I’ve read this book, but it’s been a long time. So long ago that I wasn’t yet keeping track of what I read, dammit. I hope someone out there has a better memory than I do. I’ll keep thinking about it and trying to come up with it in the meantime.
I don’t think I’ve read this one, but the unmanageably sexy boobs and the stripey hair have definitely shown up a time or thousand.
This sounds a bit crazy. I have to have it! :))
Could that book possibly be part of John Galsworthy’s Forsythe Saga? One or more of those books had a character named Irene whose hair color was described as “feuilles mortes” (dead leaves), and I seem to remember that nobody liked or trusted this character because she was so impossibly beautiful.
@SusiB
I knew there had to be a reason why nobody likes or trusts me. And here I always figured it was because I’m so damned smart.
Don’t hate me because I’m beautiful!
Okay, go ahead, hate me because I’m beautiful.
I totally remember the hair, assuming we are thinking of the same book. When she makes her debut in society, her mother hires a hair person to put it up so none of the red is visible, but our heroine does the Charlestown on a table and it all comes tumbling down, inflaming the passions of the husband to be.
I remember there being a custody dispute between the woman and her mother-in-law maybe? Kind of a parallel to the Gloria Vanderbilt story. But a hurricane comes and kills grandma when she goes outside during the eye…
Now I totally need the title so I can read it again.
I’m so sad this hasn’t been discovered yet. It sounds like all sorts of hilarious goodness. Does the search still live on?