Introduction

The latest novel from the bestselling author of Dollface and What the Lady Wants takes us deep into the tumultuous world of 1950s Chicago where a female journalist struggles with the heavy price of ambition...

Every second of every day, something is happening. There’s a story out there buried in the muck, and Jordan Walsh, coming from a family of esteemed reporters, wants to be the one to dig it up. But it’s 1955, and the men who dominate the city room of the Chicago Tribune have no interest in making room for a female cub reporter. Instead Jordan is relegated to society news, reporting on Marilyn Monroe sightings at the Pump Room and interviewing secretaries for the White Collar Girl column.

Even with her journalistic legacy and connections to luminaries like Mike Royko, Nelson Algren, and Ernest Hemingway, Jordan struggles to be taken seriously. Of course, that all changes the moment she establishes a secret source inside Mayor Daley’s office and gets her hands on some confidential information. Now careers and lives are hanging on Jordan’s every word. But if she succeeds in landing her stories on the front page, there’s no guarantee she’ll remain above the fold.…

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Excerpt

The following Friday afternoon the guys in the city room were clowning around, ganging up on Peter. Someone hid his eyeshade and he had worked himself into a state trying to find it.

I was on deadline for a fashion feature on self-belted Bermuda shorts. And this was one of the more exciting assignments I’d been given lately. I had ten column inches for this piece, a lot of space to fill with seersucker versus linen, versus plaid versus solid.

I was trying to focus when Randy started singing “See the USA / In your Chevrolet. . . .” Meanwhile, Walter and Henry were passing around the new issue of Playboy and debating who had the better centerfold, Jayne Mansfield or Bettie Page.

“But did you see the jugs on Mansfield?” said Walter, banging his pipe against the ashtray. “I’d take a sultry blonde with a pair of jugs like that over a brunette any day.”

“Oh, I don’t know.” Henry laughed and whistled through his teeth. “I wouldn’t kick Bettie Page out of bed. She’s got a sweet pair. . . .”

“Guys—” I looked up, exasperated. “Do you mind saving the locker-room talk for later?”

“What’s the matter, Walsh?” said Walter as he fired up his pipe. “Are we offending your delicate sensibilities?”

“Oh, fuck off, you asshole.”

“Whoa!” Henry laughed. “She told you.”

The fellows were still giving me a hard time when Mrs. Angelo interrupted, calling me over to the features desk by waving a piece of copy above her head.

“Come here, kid. What’s this piece all about?” She held up the copy for me to see. “The first human trials for a female contraceptive?”

“It’s an article about Margaret Sanger and—”

“Yes, I can see that.” Mrs. Angelo pursed her lips. “Mr. Pearson said you submitted it to him earlier this morning.”

“I was—”

“Why would you take it upon yourself to write an article like that without discussing it with me first? Or Mr. Pearson, for that matter.”

“Because I knew you probably wouldn’t have let me write it.”

“And you would have been correct.” She fisted up the copy in her hand and pitched it in the wastebasket. “From now on stick to the assignments you’re given. Understood?”

“But this is important. We’re on the verge of a major breakthrough for women.”

“Uh-huh . . .” She left her desk with me trailing behind her down the center aisle.

“And I bet most women don’t even know that this is possible.”

She spun around. “I’m only going to say this to you once more—I appreciate what you’re trying to do. I get it. I do. But you’re paid to write about subjects that you’re assigned to, and right now that’s taffeta and calla lilies. Not contraception, kid.”

Henry, Walter and the others laughed while Mrs. Angelo reprimanded me.

“Hey, Walsh,” said Walter with a snort as I made my way back to my desk, “how’s that calla lily exposé coming along?”

“Why don’t you take your little Playboy into the men’s room and do something useful with yourself.”

“Whoa!” Henry pounded his fist against the desk and laughed along with Benny, Randy and the rest of them.

Even though I was disappointed that Mrs. Angelo killed my article, I joined in, knowing that the guys got a kick out of me. They weren’t used to working with a woman who could take her share of razzing and dish it back. I glanced up at the row of clocks over the horseshoe. It was half past four and I was beat. It had been a long week. I was putting the cover over my typewriter when M came up to my desk.

Her butterfly-rimmed sunglasses were propped on her nose, and her Kelly bag, which must have cost a small fortune, was hanging off her forearm just above her charm bracelet. She looked very Marilyn-like.

“Come on,” she said. “I think you and I could use a cocktail.”

We headed over to Riccardo’s, a bar near the Tribune, tucked away behind the Wrigley Building, down the stairs on Rush Street. Riccardo’s was a legendary watering hole. From as far back as my father’s day, it was where the newspapermen went for lunch and for drinks after work. A lot of advertising types went there, too, which made for an interesting dynamic because everyone knew that the copywriters made more money than the reporters but that the reporters were better writers and worked harder. So the ad guys stayed on one side of the bar and the reporters on the other. I remember my father telling my brother and me stories about Riccardo’s back in the days of Prohibition, when it was a speakeasy. He and Ben Hecht used to sit at the back table and have their martinis and shoot the bull. When Eliot started working at the Sun-Times, he and his buddies went to Riccardo’s, too. It was a journalistic rite of passage.

Now it was my turn to join the newspaper drinking tradition, only I was a woman and my male coworkers didn’t see me as a real reporter. I’d been working alongside them for the past two months and they knew damn well that I was tougher than the typical sob sister. They knew I’d been around a city room all my life. But still, I was a girl, assigned to society news and therefore relegated to a table with the other female journalists while the guys sat at the bar, backs turned as if they hardly knew us. M, Gabby and the others paid them no mind. They were engrossed in their own conversations, talking about plans for the weekend. We were sitting with Eppie Lederer and some other girls from the Sun-Times.

Eppie wrote an advice column. Millions of women read her faithfully, but when it came to us, her friends, she rarely offered an opinion. You’d ask her about a specific concern, maybe you were having problems with your fellow or you were in a jam at work, and she’d look at you and say, “How the hell would I know what you should to do?”

“Because you’re Ann Landers!”

“Only on paper.”

Mr. Ellsworth and Mr. Copeland came inside and brushed past us on their way to the bar. M excused herself, and on her way to the ladies’ room, she got detoured. I watched as she stood before the men at the bar, hip jutting out, laughing, basking in their attention.

No sooner had she returned to our table and placed a cigarette in her mouth than one of the ad guys swooped in from across the room and offered her a light. She thanked him with a long, luxurious exhale and a smile. He snapped his Zippo shut and stood there, waiting for an invitation to join her, but she dismissed him with another cool exhale.

It was going on seven o’clock and Eppie, Gabby—who rarely stayed for more than one drink—and the other girls had already left. I was about to go myself when M asked me to stay for one more.

“Please? Just one.”

She seemed lonely, and I was surprised that a beautiful woman like her wouldn’t have had a date on a Friday night. Certainly enough men at Riccardo’s would have loved to take her out. I sat back down and ordered another vodka tonic.

“So what are you doing this weekend?” she asked.

“I have to go interview an anthropologist down at the University of Chicago for a story I’m working on.”

“You never stop. You really love this business, don’t you?” M said, giving her drink a swirl.

“Don’t you?”

“Nah, not like you. I’ve been at the Tribune for five years— that’s four and half years longer than I expected. I started out as a copygirl, and that’s only because Mrs. Angelo took pity on me. She was standing behind me one day at Logan’s Luncheonette and I came up ten cents short on my check. She gave me a dime and a job. I had just moved here from Milwaukee after my father died. I was lost without him. I couldn’t stay back home with my mother. She was insane, used to chase me around the house with a broom, swatting me with it. My father was the only one who could keep her in line. He protected me from her, and once he was gone, I had to leave too. So I came to Chicago—didn’t know anyone. I was flat broke when I met Mrs. Angelo. . . .”

M continued talking, but I was stuck on after my father died. Hadn’t she told me that her father was the one who’d rented her apartment for her?

“. . . I never thought I’d become a journalist,” M was saying. “Never wanted to be one. I really thought I’d be married and raising a family by now.” She smiled with a certain sadness in her gaze.

I wanted to say something about her apartment when Mr. Ellsworth and Mr. Copeland stopped at our table. “Good night ladies,” said Mr. Ellsworth with a tip of his fedora.

“See you Monday morning,” said Mr. Copeland.

“My goodness,” I said as they walked away. “They actually acknowledged us. Do you believe it?”

“Aw, the two of them are okay.” M watched as they left, her eyes trained on the door long after they’d gone.

Before I could steer the conversation back to her apartment, M excused herself to talk to a table of cigar-smoking men from Leo Burnett and I found myself sitting alone. A few seats opened up at the bar, so I dared to join Walter, Henry, Benny, Peter and Randy, saddling up beside them. They gave me an amused nod, as if to say, Isn’t she cute, and went back to their conversation.

At one point Walter turned to me and said, “You really want to be one of the boys—

don’t you, Walsh? How about doing a shot with us?”

The others leaned in, watching me, expecting me to refuse.

“Sure,” I said. “Why not?”

Walter snickered as he packed tobacco into his pipe, tamping it down. “Johnny,” he called over to the bartender. “A round of Canadian Club over here.” Walter struck a matchstick and set his bowl flaming before extinguishing the blue tip with a shake of his wrist.

The bartender poured six shot glasses of whiskey and dealt them out like a hand of cards. The others laughed, thinking I’d pack up my handbag and head home. But this was my moment to prove that I was as tough as any of them. I picked up my shot, clanked my glass against theirs, and with my eyes locked onto Walter’s, I threw it back. The heat spread through my chest while the vapors rose up to my sinuses. I felt the burn of the whiskey behind my eyes.

The others watched me, waiting, expecting me to cough, to wince, to grimace. Instead, I slammed my empty glass on the bar and said, “Johnny, set ’em up again.”

“Holy Christ,” said Henry.

There was a burst of laughter.

“Ehhhx-cellent,” said Peter.

“Now you’re talking.” Randy scooted up closer to the bar.

“I’m serious,” I said, still looking at Walter. “Set ’em up.”

There was a round of howls as they clapped, and Henry signaled to the bartender for the bottle. We all held up our next shot, did a toast and knocked them back. The second shot went down easier. I had just set my glass down and barely gotten a cigarette lit before Benny called for a third round. We took our time with that one. I got lost in clouds of cigarette smoke. The jukebox was stuck on Mr. Sandman, playing it over and over again. I had no idea who ordered the next round, but before I knew it, half the men at the bar had gathered around us, eager to see if the little lady could keep up. Apparently the gauntlet had been thrown.

I became vaguely aware of a man, about my age, standing behind me.

He leaned over and touched my shoulder. “Are you okay?” he asked.

I nodded.

“You don’t have to do this,” he whispered.

“Oh, yes, I do.” I turned and looked into his eyes, blue-green and drooping slightly at the outer corners.

I was woozy and could tell that the shots were getting to the fellows, too. They eyed me, trying to see if I was weakening, getting ready to cave.

“Another round,” I said. “On me.”

Onlookers banged on the bar top, making their drinks jump while chanting, “Go, go, go. . . .”

I could feel the whiskey churning in my stomach. I didn’t think it was possible to down another shot, but I had to. If I couldn’t keep up with them, they’d never let me live it down. So I drew a deep breath and took the next shot. When I turned the glass over, the others cheered, applauding.

I was prepared to have another go at it when Walter stood up, peeled off a few bills from his money clip and said, “It’s getting late.”

“Aw, c’mon,” said Benny, swaying on his stool. “One more.”

Walter didn’t take his eyes off me. I couldn’t tell if he was impressed or insulted.

“I’ve got dinner waiting at home.” He dropped his money onto the bar and left without so much as a good-bye. view abbreviated excerpt only...

Discussion Questions

1. Back in the 1950s newspapers were everyone’s primary source of news. Do you think in general we are less informed about local, national and world events due to the decline of newspapers? Or do you think we are better informed due to the immediacy of things like Twitter and 24/7 cable news?

2. A major theme in WHITE COLLAR GIRL is women in the workplace and the challenges they faced in trying to break through the glass ceiling. How do you see the challenges facing career women in the 1950s as compare to those found in today’s workplace? In what ways have we advanced and in what ways do you feel were still stuck?

3. Do you still read a daily newspaper and if so, do you prefer to read your news in print or online? If you read online, what are the advantages and what are the things you miss about not reading the paper in hard copy form?

4. WHITE COLLAR GIRL draws upon many real life scandals that took place during the 1950s and early 60s. At various points in the book, the main character is confronted with moral issues over what she is willing to do in order to get a story. In some cases she even bends the law. Do you think reporters are justified in going to any length in order to expose the truth

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