About this item
A World War II love story, narrated through a new bride's dazzling array of vintage postcards, newspaper clippings, photographs, and moreLila Jerome has never been very lucky in love, and has always been more interested in studying architecture and, more recently, supporting the war bond effort on the home front. But in the fall of 1943, a chance spark with a boarder in her apartment sets Lila on a course that shakes up all of her ideas about romance.Lila is intoxicated by Perry Weld, the charismatic army engineer who's about to ship out to the European front, and it isn't long before she discovers that the feeling is mutual. After just a few weeks together, caught up in the dramatic spirit of the times and with Perry's departure date fast approaching, the two decide to elope. In a stunning kaleidoscope of vibrant ephemera, Lila boldly attempts to redefine her life in America as she navigates the heartache and longing of a marriage separated by ocean and war.In her second scrapbook novel after the lauded Scrapbook of Frankie Pratt, Caroline Preston has once again pulled from her own extraordinary collection of vintage memorabilia, transporting us back to the lively, tumultuous 1940s and introducing us to an unforgettable, ambitious heroine who must learn to reconcile a wartime marriage with a newfound self-confidence.
About the Author
As a girl growing up in Lake Forest, Illinois, Caroline Preston used to pore through her grandmother's and mother's scrapbooks and started collecting antique scrapbooks when she was in high school. She majored in American Studies at Dartmouth College, and received a master's in American Civilization from Brown University. Inspired by her interest in manuscripts and ephemera, she worked as an archivist at the Rhode Island Historical Society, the Peabody/Essex Museum and Harvard's Houghton Library.
Preston is the author of three previous novels. "Jackie by Josie," a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, was drawn from her (brief) researching stint for a Jackie O. biography. "Gatsby's Girl" chronicles F. Scott Fitzgerald's first girlfriend who was the model for Daisy Buchanan. In "The Scrapbook of Frankie Pratt," she has drawn from her own collection of vintage ephemera to create a novel in the unique form of a scrapbook.
Preston has been awarded a Massachusetts Artist Foundation Fellowship and has had residencies at Yaddo, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and Ragdale, where she is a Distinguished Artist. She lives with her husband, the writer Christopher Tilghman, in Charlottesville, Virginia and has three mostly grown-up sons.
