Dennis Orphen is a young, clever novelist with a keen eye for a good story. This time, however, his material is drawn from the romantic woes of his closest friend, Effie Callingham. More than a decade earlier, Effie's husband-the superstar writer Andrew Callingham-abandoned her for a younger, prettier woman. In the years since, Effie has stubbornly defended his reputation, clinging to the desperate hope that he might one day come to his senses and return.When Dennis's novel is published, their friendship is put to the test. In his thinly veiled portrait, Effie's private pain is exposed to a scandal-hungry literary society, while Andrew is unmasked as a womanising egoist. Meanwhile, Dennis finds himself entangled in romantic troubles of his own, locked in an uneasy relationship with Corinne, a married woman whose presence provokes both longing and jealousy.Together, Dennis and Effie are forced to confront unpalatable truths about themselves in this immensely entertaining yet deeply poignant satire, set in the seedy underbelly of New York society, from brandy-drenched nightclubs to cab-lined curbs.



Dawn Powell (1896-1965) was an American novelist and playwright known for her incisive satires of New York's cultural and literary circles. Born in Mount Gilead, Ohio, she endured a tumultuous childhood before running away at thirteen to live with an aunt who later supported her studies at Lake Erie College. After graduating, Powell moved to New York City, immersing herself in the bohemian atmosphere of Greenwich Village as a "permanent visitor" to the metropolis. She gained early recognition for her witty, often risqué pieces in The New Yorker and Esquire, and 1939 became a Scribner author, sharing legendary editor Maxwell Perkins with Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald. Although Powell enjoyed a devoted circle of admirers, her work drifted into obscurity after her death. Interest in her novels was revived decades later through Gore Vidal's appraisal in The New York Review of Books, as well as championing from Pulitzer Prize-winning critic Tim Page, who as executor of her estate has worked tirelessly to keep Powell in print.