In 1922, 15 year old Louise Brooks, future silent film star, went to New York to attend dance classes. A young lady in that era could not travel unaccompanied, and a chaperone was sought. A 36 year old married woman went with her, taking the train from Wichita, Kansas to New York City and staying with her in a small apartment. This is fact.

Moriarty has taken this nameless chaperone, and given her a name, Cora X, Cora Kaufmann, Cora Carlisle. While Louise is the historical character, she is not the focus of this book; she is the catalyst for huge changes in Cora’s life.

At the time the story starts, Cora is a married woman with two collage age sons. Her husband, although not rich, is a well to do lawyer. They have a large house, an automobile, and a servant. Cora serves in many women’s clubs, raising money and doing good. While she is marginally more liberal than her neighbors- she doesn’t like the KKK, for instance- she is certainly set in her ways and obeys society’s rules. But she has things she wants to learn about her past in New York- where she was actually born- and takes the opportunity Louise offers to go there. Suddenly in a big city where no one knows her, exposed to new things and in the company of a rebellious young girl who reads philosophy and questions the rightness of society, she finds herself questioning, growing and changing.

These changes are driven in large part by the changes that American society was going through. Cora would have been born in 1886, and would, in her lifetime, see the invention of automobiles, airplanes, and television among many other things. Her character lives through two world wars, great technological change, Prohibition, the great Depression, the sexual revolution, women getting the vote, Stonewall, and the end of racial segregation. Fashion and social expectations changed radically. Unlike some of her friends, Cora finds that change is good. She examines her life and arranges it to suit her needs and the needs of her family. Is her life perfect? No, but it’s better than many. The situation she ends up with is extremely unorthodox-especially for the era it’s set in- but it presents the only way she and her family can be happy and still exist in society at large.

I loved this book, but less as a novel than as a work of fictionalized sociology. No character other than Cora is delved into; we know only the surface of her husband, little more of Louise. At times they seem like set dressing. Cora’s life is pretty easy, for all its problems. People agree with her a lot. Situations turn to her advantage. This is not to say she doesn’t have heartbreak and worries, but she survives them gracefully. But despite these flaws, I did not want to put this book down. The sweep of almost a century of change in America is riveting.