A Time to Be Born

Amanda Keeler has clawed her way out of the backwaters of Ohio and into the affections of Julien Evans, New York's newspaper magnate. With his ex-wife vanquished, she reigns over their Fifth Avenue mansion, throwing martini-soaked parties and climbing the bestseller list with her wildly successful (ghostwritten) novels.To those back home, Amanda has it all. Behind the glittering façade, however, she's grown restless - denied the human right to flirt by her pathologically jealous husband. When a timid school friend arrives in the city, Amanda seizes the perfect alibi, landing little Vicky a job and leasing her a studio which she plans to use in secret for trysts with old flame, Ken. But desire rarely follows orders. Vicky falls fatally for Ken, and soon the three are flung off course into a volatile love triangle that threatens to topple Amanda's carefully constructed empire. Bitingly funny and irresistibly glamorous, A Time to Be Born is a timeless portrait of self-invention, set in a 1940s Manhattan rife with backstabbing charm, brittle friendships and ambitious women with nothing to lose, least of all a heart.



Dawn Powell was born in Ohio in 1896, the second of three daughters. After enduring great cruelty at the hands of her stepmother, Dawn ran away at the age of thirteen and arrived at the home of her aunt, who served hot meals to travellers emerging from the train station across the street. Dawn worked her way through college and made it to New York. There she married an advertising executive and had one child.Powell referred to herself as a "permanent visitor" in her adopted Manhattan and brought to her writing a perspective gained from her upbringing in Middle America. She knew many legendary writers of her time, and Diana Trilling famously said it was Dawn 'who really says the funny things for which Dorothy Parker gets credit.' Ernest Hemingway called her his 'favorite living writer.' She died in 1965 she was buried in New York's Potter's Field.