“With her shiny black bob and milky skin, Louise Brooks epitomized silent-film glamour. A mesmerizing take on women in this pivotal era.”- Vogue “In her new novel, The Chaperone, Laura Moriarty treats this golden age with an evocative look at the early life of silent-film icon Louise Brooks, who in 1922 leaves Wichita, Kansas, for New York City in the company of 36-year-old chaperone, Cora Carlisle. In this layered and inventive story, Moriarty raises profound questions about family, sexuality, history, and whether it is luck or will-or a sturdy combination of the two-that makes for a wonderful life.”- O, The Oprah Magazine and how their unlikely relationship changed their lives. “ The Chaperone is the enthralling story of two women. Over the course of Cora’s relationship with Louise, her eyes are opened to the promise of the twentieth century and a new understanding of the possibilities for being fully alive.ĭrawing on the rich history of the 1920s, ’30s, and beyond-from the orphan trains to Prohibition, flappers, and the onset of the Great Depression to the burgeoning movement for equal rights and new opportunities for women-Laura Moriarty’s The Chaperone illustrates how rapidly everything, from fashion and hemlines to values and attitudes, was changing at this time and what a vast difference it all made for Louise Brooks, Cora Carlisle, and others like them. And while what she finds isn’t what she anticipated, she is liberated in a way she could not have imagined. Ultimately, the five weeks they spend together will transform their lives forever.įor Cora, the city holds the promise of discovery that might answer the question at the core of her being, and even as she does her best to watch over Louise in this strange and bustling place she embarks on a mission of her own. Young Louise, already stunningly beautiful and sporting her famous black bob with blunt bangs, is known for her arrogance and her lack of respect for convention.
Cora Carlisle, a complicated but traditional woman with her own reasons for making the trip, has no idea what she’s in for. Much to her annoyance, she is accompanied by a thirty-six-year-old chaperone, who is neither mother nor friend. Only a few years before becoming a famous silent-film star and an icon of her generation, a fifteen-year-old Louise Brooks leaves Wichita, Kansas, to study with the prestigious Denishawn School of Dancing in New York. Soon to be a feature film from the creators of Downton Abbey starring Elizabeth McGovern, The Chaperone is a New York Times-bestselling novel about the woman who chaperoned an irreverent Louise Brooks to New York City in the 1920s and the summer that would change them both.
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