THE ASHTRAYS ARE FULL AND THE GLASSES ARE EMPTY

In Mickelwait’s historical novel, a woman from New York society embraces France during the Jazz Age.

In 1905, highborn Sara Sherman Wiborg dreams of a life beyond the rigid confines of Gilded Age New York society. She finds her soulmate in Gerald Murphy. He is wealthy, but his family is “in trade” (they own a company that sells luxury goods), and, at age 27, he is five years younger than Sara. Although the union is opposed by both families, they marry in 1915. They agree “to find and celebrate beauty in even the smallest things.” A daughter they name Honoria is born in 1917, followed by two sons, Baoth in 1919 and Patrick in 1920. After some time at Harvard, where Gerald studies landscape architecture, the couple rejects Prohibition and “the commercial, Puritanical vengeance of American society.” The family moves to France. Fully embracing the Jazz Age, their lively social circle includes Cole Porter, Fernand Léger, John Dos Passos, Archibald MacLeish, Ernest Hemingway, Pablo Picasso, and Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald. Sara and Gerald relish the freedom they’ve sought for themselves and their children in Paris and the Cap d’Antibes. As the 1920s end, personal and societal crises upend their lives: Baoth dies of meningitis and Patrick of tuberculosis, and the 1929 stock market crash and the rise of Hitler and Mussolini hasten a move back to the United States. Sara struggles with the knowledge that Gerald is gay, but their harmonious perspectives, love for each other, and grief over the deaths of their sons keep them together. In her first novel, Mickelwait illuminates the life of a woman who is an afterthought among the outsized personalities of the time, especially Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald, who unflatteringly portray her in their work. (Sara’s own abilities are overshadowed as she supports Gerald and creates a rich, loving life for her children, but she unflinchingly embraces the messiness of existence.) Mickelwait’s descriptions effectively evoke the time and place: “Paris was a living, breathing organism in which fresh ideas were floating on the air waiting to be grabbed, like drunken birds.”

Fans of Paula McLain and Marie Benedict will enjoy this insightful novel.