Synopsis
Tampa, Florida, 1898: A hazy frontier where the Old World meets the New, where miracles of transformation are possible and the soil is so fertile that dry sticks take root and flower. Dominating the town is the magisterial new Tampa Bay Hotel and dominating the hotel is an exotic creature by the name of Monsieur Lucien Goulet III, wig maker to the wealthy and glamorous. As winter nears its end, Goulet is entranced by a head of hair belonging to the young widow Marion Unger. But this material, without which he absolutely cannot form his greatest masterpiece, is hard to come by, as it is still attached to its owner.
Publishers Weekly
Swampy late 19th-century Tampa Bay is the unlikely romantic setting for this poignant historical novel by New Zealander Chidgey (The Strength of the Sun). Upon the construction of the Tampa Bay Hotel, a Byzantine fairy tale castle that soon attracts fashionable winter travelers, three eccentric American-made personalities descend on the town: a wig maker, a cigar factory worker and a Detroit widow. Marion Unger, a young Detroit wife, had arrived with her bricklayer husband, Jack, who helped build the hotel; he dies soon after its completion. In mourning, Marion finds her way to inimitable Parisian perruquier Lucien Goulet III, recently installed in the Tampa area to make his fortune; he weaves a memorial bracelet for her out of her hair and her late husband's, and becomes obsessed by her white-blonde tresses. Meanwhile, a Cuban immigrant teenager Rafael MEndez, employed as a roller in the local Ybor City cigar factory, is intent on aiding his country in the throes of revolution. When Rafael goes to work at night for the conniving Goulet picking through people's trash to search for hanks of hair he meets the chaste, rather naOve Marion and falls in love with her. A transformation is the sort of stupendous architectural hairpiece designed by M. Goulet, but here it also stands for the changes ushering in a motley new society. Incorporating her research with an organic touch, Chidgey constructs a tale as enchanting as the hotel rising from its Florida swamp. Agent, Kim Witherspoon. (May 6) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.