Excerpt from The Dime Museum by Joyce Hinnefeld, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

They'd been secretaries at a library. A favorite of Chicago's cultural elite from the time of its founding in 1887, handily growing and in need of more staff when Maude finished her secretarial classes in 1922.

Mr. Josephs, the collections director, had been Maude's boss and now he was Prue's. Though she'll retire soon also. But she won't live here, in this little piece of bedlam by the lake where Maude now gets to live. There's a carriage house waiting for Prue behind her sister's house in Irving Park, all furnished and ready for her. Maude is also welcome there, Prue has told her, though Maude sincerely doubts it. She won't be going there, and neither will Tom. He's refused to set foot in that house, even on that block, since the day he turned eighteen and learned the truth.

Mr. Josephs also loved her stories. That's how she'd learned to parcel them out, bit by bit. The first one—a true one, only changed a little—had gotten her the job as his secretary forty years ago. That was the one about the night she'd spent in the rooms of the famous poet.

Speaking of it to Mr. Josephs she'd called herself a member of a touring theatre troupe. She'd been careful not to say vaudeville. He was so young then, barely out of college at the University of Chicago, blond and eager in his tie and cufflinks and ill-fitting suit. An elfin, breathless literature student whose father had made a suitable donation to the library and so ensured his job.

Was it Shakespeare they'd done, he'd asked her? And she'd murmured something, "A bit, yes ..." and tried to change the subject. Another time, when he asked, she'd veered a little closer to the truth. "A little of everything, as best I can recall. Even a bit of song and dance." It was all so long ago, she'd said, then closed her steno pad and briskly left his office.

Should she tell Tom the stories she's never told anyone else? The truths she hid from Mr. Josephs, even from Prue? Some of the earliest ones she remembers. About what a failure she'd been at that other thing, that other life as a performer. Or about her time as a dime museum caricature. How could she explain it, the fact the happiest time of her life was that period, starting sometime during the Great War, when people had paid to gawk at her as she sat on a stool, wearing trousers and suspenders and a monocle over her eye?

At her and Annie. At her and the only person she's ever loved. Besides little Tom.

Excerpted from The Dime Museum by Joyce Hinnefeld. Copyright © 2025 by Joyce Hinnefeld. Excerpted by permission of Unbridled Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.