The Courtesan's Daughter

 

The Courtesan's Daughter

Susanne Dunlap

Publication date: April 25, 2023 by Atmosphere Press

Genre: Historical Fiction

Rating: 3 🍷🍷🍷

Summary: What happens when a daughter’s dream and a mother’s sordid past collide?

1910 New York. Seventeen-year-old Sylvie and her French-immigrant mother Justine eke out a living doing piecework in a tenement on the Lower East Side, while Sylvie attends school so that she can escape their life of poverty by becoming a teacher.

At least, that’s what her mother believes should happen. Sylvie, though, has a different dream. She wants to be a star in the new moving pictures, just like the beautiful Vitagraph Girl. When she meets a dangerously handsome Italian boy at church one Sunday and he encourages her ambitions, she begins secretly taking steps toward the career she knows her mother won’t approve of.

But Sylvie isn’t the only one with secrets. Justine has kept her sordid past from Sylvie ever since they came to New York fifteen years before, stitching together a fabric of lies along with the shirtwaists she finishes every day, doing everything in her power to keep the truth from her daughter—that she fled Paris as a courtesan after committing a crime that could still get her arrested, or worse.

When Justine’s past catches up with her in a single act of brutality, Sylvie witnesses what she thinks is her mother’s betrayal and runs away during a freak blizzard, putting them both in grave danger.

Ambition, survival, and unexpected alliances combine in this mother-daughter story that proves love can conquer all—at a price.

My Thoughts: I have read and loved many of Dunlap's works. She has the ability to write about person and place in such a way that the reader is spellbound. With this latest work, Dunlap takes readers on one woman's journey to protect her daughter at all costs. Justine would do everything in her power to place her daughter on a path for success. Sylvie accepted her mother's efforts until she realized that making her own decisions allowed her to fulfill her unspoken dreams. Unmentioned horrors and unexpected dangers amount to a flurry of secrets that neither can truly unveil to the other. The inclusion of the early years of Vitagraph Studios was a very nice addition and correlated well with Sylvie's desires. 

This book didn't hit the mark for me as much as I would have liked. I found myself skimming many areas and could not find an emotional connection to either main character. I received a copy of this title via NetGalley.