The vixen : a novel
(Book)

In 1953 at a distinguished New York publishing firm, Simon Putnam, a recent Harvard graduate, is tasked with editing a steamy bodice-ripper based on the trial of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg--a project that makes him realize that the people around him are not what they seem.

Its 1953, and Simon Putnam, a recent Harvard graduate newly hired by a distinguished New York publishing firm, has entered a glittering world of three-martini lunches, exclusive literary parties, and old-money aristocrats in exquisitely tailored suits, a far cry from his loving, middle-class Jewish family in Coney Island. But Simons first assignmentediting The Vixen, the Patriot and the Fanatic, a lurid bodice-ripper improbably based on the recent trial and execution of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, a potboiler intended to shore up the firms failing financesmakes him question the cost of admission. Because Simon has a secret that, at the height of the Red Scare and the McCarthy hearings, he cannot reveal: his beloved mother was a childhood friend of Ethel Rosenbergs. His parents mourn Ethels death. Simons dilemma grows thornier when he meets The Vixens author, the startlingly beautiful, reckless, seductive Anya Partridge, ensconced in her opium-scented boudoir in a luxury Hudson River mental asylum. As mysteries deepen, as the confluence of sex, money, politics and power spirals out of Simons control, he must face what hes lost by exchanging the loving safety of his middle-class Jewish parents Coney Island apartment for the witty, whiskey-soaked orbit of his charismatic boss, the legendary Warren Landry. Gradually Simon realizes that the people around him are not what they seem, that everyone is keeping secrets, that ordinary events may conceal a diabolical plotand that these crises may steer him toward a brighter future.