Excerpt from Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk by Kathleen Rooney, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Mother saw Sadie as wasting that last, working as hard as a beast of burden as a nurse in a hospital in New York City. Though now I know that Sadie can't have been living the life of Riley, I wanted to move there and join her. What a smart girl.

My mother resented Sadie like a stepsister resenting Cinderella, but she was polite. She did her no social violence. Was always hospitable and gracious on Sadie's visits, both as a point of pride and because my father would not have abided otherwise. Though he, too, a lawyer, thought Sadie's work beneath her.

My devotion to both Phoebe and Sadie has remained constant over the decades. When I think of either, I also think of lofty mountain chains and cool delights.

The New York I moved to eventually was empty of Sadie, though I've since walked by St. Vincent's, the hospital where she worked, I don't know how many times. She died in the influenza epidemic of 1918.

Phoebe, deathless, simply faded from public consciousness like a once-popular song. Anthracite, needed to fight the Great War, was not to be used on railroads anymore. The world changed, and Phoebe disappeared forever:

On time the trip ends without a slip

And Phoebe sadly takes her grip

Loath to alight, bows left and right,

"Good-bye, Dear Road of Anthracite."

*   *   *

But I never forgot her. I didn't want to be her, so much as to have her—to create her.

Sadie led me to Manhattan, but Phoebe led me to poetry, and to advertising. So enrapt was I at her entrancing rhymes that when the time came to apply for jobs, I rhymed my letters and my samples alike:

To work for you

Is my fondest wish

Signed your ever-true

Lillian Boxfish

*   *   *

Fifteen inquiries. Five favorable replies. Including one by telegram from R.H. Macy's. This was the one I chose: my first serious job in New York City. A job which in some ways saved my life, and in other ways ruined it. What a smart girl.

Excerpted from Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk by Kathleen Rooney. Copyright © 2017 by Kathleen Rooney. Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.