Researching The Dollhouse

Since my novel The Dollhouse was released on Tuesday, I’ve had a terrific time communicating with readers and bloggers. One of the most popular questions I’ve been asked is about my research for the book, which takes place in 1952 and 2016. For the chapters in the 1950s, I had a grand time going through back issues of newspapers and women’s magazines to get a sense of what that time period was like. I wanted to know what people were worried about, what was the political and cultural climate at the time.

I learned that even though the economy was booming in those post-WWII years, the threat of the atom bomb and McCarthyism darkened the political landscape. Meanwhile, in New York City, thousands of Puerto Ricans were immigrating in what was known as the Great Migration, and were met with hostility and discrimination. Finally, a heroin epidemic was also flaring up, often blamed on the musicians who played in the jazz clubs of the day.

So while the Barbizon was filled with young women approaching their stay in city with optimism and enthusiasm, there existed an interesting mix of denial and danger at that time, and which I hoped to capture in the book.

You can read more about the research process and the writing of The Dollhouse in my Q&A with Book Club Babble – http://bookclubbabble.com/interviews/...