Florence Adler Swims Forever by Rachel Beanland

Backstage, young stagehand Jack Gibson hopes that, if he can impress the theater’s managers, he’ll be offered a permanent job with the company. One floor away, in the colored gallery, Cecily Patterson doesn’t give a whit about the play but is grateful for a four-hour reprieve from a life that has recently gone from bad to worse. In the third-floor boxes, sits newly-widowed Sally Henry Campbell, who is glad for any opportunity to relive the happy times she shared with her husband. On the night after Christmas, the theater is packed with more than six hundred holiday revelers.

At the city’s only theater, the Charleston-based Placide & Green Company puts on two plays a night to meet the demand of a populace that’s done looking for enlightenment at the front of a church. It’s the height of the winter social season, the General Assembly is in session, and many of Virginia’s gentleman planters, along with their wives and children, have made the long and arduous journey to the capital in hopes of whiling away the darkest days of the year. Goodreads: “Readers’ Most Anticipated Books for Spring”īookBub: “The Best Historical Fiction of Spring” One of The Washington Post’s Most Anticipated Books of AprilĮ! News: “12 Books to Add to Your Reading List in April”ĪARP: “43 of Our Favorite New Books for Spring” A masterful and “gripping” ( The Washington Post) work of historical fiction about an incendiary tragedy that shocked a young nation and tore apart a community in a single night, from the author of Florence Adler Swims Forever.

Florence Adler Swims Forever by Rachel Beanland