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A Novel
by Elizabeth J. Church
Ruby's life glitters with success, but she still must conquer her tragic past and discover what love really looks like.
Lily Decker never meant to become a showgirl. As a young girl in small-town Kansas, she danced to forget the pain of losing her family in a car accident. And dancing made her feel beautiful when the attentions of her Uncle Miles only brought shame. In 1967, Lily is grown and ready to leave her past behind. She changes her name to Ruby Wilde and heads to the Rat Pack's Las Vegas to make a name for herself as a troupe dancer. However, the competition is fierce and she finds work as a showgirl, instead, doing fan-kicks in sky-high headdresses and sparkling costumes. Her new life brims with glamour and excitement, but something is still missing. Is it love? What choices will she make to feel whole again, and at what cost?
With her uncanny understanding of the hidden lives of women, Elizabeth J. Church captures the iconic extravagance of an era and the bravery of a woman who blazes her own path to freedom.
"A stirring bildungsroman that follows a girl from trauma in 1957 Kansas to self-discovery in 1960s Las Vegas ... Church paints an unflinching, frequently heartbreaking portrait of a resilient young woman's coming-of-age set against an exciting, glamorous backdrop." —Publishers Weekly
"A beautifully rendered tale of personal redemption filled with friendship, loss, extravagant furs, and feathery headdresses." —Kirkus Reviews
"On the run from misery, eighteen-year-old Lily Decker transforms herself into Ruby Wilde, devouring Las Vegas in glittering bites. Church has given us a true heroine, both flawed and beautiful, who rises even as she falls." —Juliette Fay, USA Today bestselling author of The Tumbling Turner Sisters
"A razzle-dazzle novel about loss, love, and friendship ... All the Beautiful Girls pulls back the curtain on the glamorous, titillating world of showgirls, revealing the emotional bruises hidden beneath the dazzling costumes." —Melanie Benjamin, New York Times bestselling author of The Swans of Fifth Avenue
This information about All the Beautiful Girls was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Elizabeth J. Church is the author of The Atomic Weight of Love. All the Beautiful Girls is her second novel. Ms. Church lives in northern New Mexico.
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Give me the luxuries of life and I will willingly do without the necessities.
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