VIXEN

A bright Coney Island Jew tries to rise in the gin-soaked world of WASP publishing, where his job is to mash the tragedy of the Rosenberg executions into pulp. This cunning and engrossing book is set in 1953. Simon Putnam is a recent Harvard graduate, newly hired by a distinguished New York publishing firm. He has entered a glittering milieu of three-martini lunches, exclusive literary parties, and old-money aristocrats in exquisitely tailored suits, a far cry from his loving, middle-class Jewish family on Coney Island. But his first assignment, editing "The Vixen, the Patriotic and the Frantic", a steamy bodice-ripper improbably based on a recent trial of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, makes him question the cost of admission into this exciting new profession, because Simon has a secret - his beloved mother was a childhood friend of Ethel's. His dilemma grows thornier when he meets the author, the startlingly beautiful, reckless, seductive Anya Partridge, ensconced in her opium-scented boudoir in a luxury Hudson River mental asylum. As mysteries deepen, as the confluence of sex, money, politics and power spirals out of Simon's control, he must face what he's lost by exchanging the loving safety of his home for the witty, whiskey-soaked orbit of his charismatic boss, the legendary Warren Landry. But everyone is keeping secrets and ordinary events may conceal a diabolical plot. Includes passages from Anya's hilariously bad novel and illuminates a period of history with striking similarities to the current moment, plus timeless questions like how do we balance ambition and conscience, social mobility and cultural assimilation? Desirable roughcut edges to the 318pp in this US first edition.