Just Jennifer

The Chaperone by Laura Moriarty (Riverhead Books, June 2012)

What starts out as the story of the woman who accompanied a young Louise Brooks from Kansas to New York City where she first attended dance school, quickly becomes the story of a woman who has lost her past, given up her present and has little hope for the future until the summer of 1922.  Cora Carlisle agrees to chaperone an eager teenage Louise Brooks for the summer as she travels to New York City to do what she has always longed to do, dance, with dreams of becoming a star on stage.  Louise’s story become predictable as the fifteen-year-old wants to experience everything New York has to offer, though she has had very little experience in life back in Wichita, Kansas.  Cora’s story quickly unravel as we learn she was born in New York and raised in a Catholic orphanage who sent trains west on a regular basis.  As Cora’s quest to find her birth family unfolds, she finds herself facing a moral situation she never imagined and finds herself making choices that would be unthinkable to the old Cora.  Returning to her life in Kansas, we learn that things were not as they seemed for Cora, and they will remain so to the public, but finally Cora will be happy and satisfied with her life.  Louise makes another appearance after her short stint in movies, back home, broken and very much alone, as Cora makes a visit to her, not to judge Louise for her choices but to offer her a look at what might have beens can become if a path other than the conventional one is chosen.  Some may find Cora’s choices ridiculous until they are placed in the context of early twentieth-century mid-west America.  While historical fiction fans and those who enjoy fictionalized biographies will find much to enjoy here, the story goes much deeper as it becomes Cora’s, expanding the appeal to a broader audience.