The Fifth Avenue Artists Society: A Novel

In Gilded Age New York, Virginia Loftin is the oldest of four artistic sisters living in genteel poverty on the outskirts of high society. She dreams of becoming a celebrated novelist and marrying Charlie, the boy next door and her first love. When Charlie proposes to a wealthy woman instead, Ginny is devastated and retreats to rewrite their story into fiction, obsessively crafting a better ending. Literary success remains out of reach until Ginny attends a salon at a Fifth Avenue mansion belonging to her brother's friend John Hopper. Surrounded by painters, musicians, actors, and writers, she finds herself again and begins to bloom under John's increasingly romantic attention. However, when Charlie reappears in her life and Ginny discovers troubling truths about the salon, she finds herself torn between two worlds. She must navigate the competing demands of her family, her writing ambitions, and her romantic prospects, learning the high stakes involved in each.