Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk by Kathleen Rooney
There was a time in the 1930s when her name was synonymous with success. She penned catchy, witty ads for R. H. Macy's, soared to new heights as the country's highest-paid female copywriter in advertising, and became a published poet.
But that was then; Lillian is now an eighty-four-year-old elderly woman (or maybe eighty-five, a woman has the prerogative to lie about her age, after all.) She prepares to celebrate New Year's Eve, 1984, with a friend, but first it's time to take a walk down memory lane, stopping by the old haunts that defined her life, now forgotten, in New York City. Probably not a wise decision with the recent violent crime, but then Lillian has never backed away from a challenge, and she's not about to begin now. So she dons a fedora, paints her lips with her trademark Orange Fire, and steps back in time to venture out on perhaps what will be her most memorable journey of all.
The author found inspiration to write about the real Margaret Fishback (who we know as Lillian Boxfish) after impeccable research of her personal papers. Truly a pioneer in the advertising world during the years of the Great Depression, Fishback's extraordinary fictional life began to take shape over time, and the result is quite captivating.
Told with compassion, humor, and a deep understanding of growing old, I highly recommend taking a walk with Lillian...so glad I did.
There was a time in the 1930s when her name was synonymous with success. She penned catchy, witty ads for R. H. Macy's, soared to new heights as the country's highest-paid female copywriter in advertising, and became a published poet. But that was then; Lillian is now an eighty-four-year-old elderly woman (or maybe eighty-five, a woman has the prerogative to lie about her age, after all.) She prepares to celebrate New Year's Eve, 1984, with a friend, but first it's time to take a walk down memory lane, stopping by the old haunts that defined her life, now forgotten, in New York City. Probably not a wise decision with the recent violent crime, but then Lillian has never backed away from a challenge, and she's not about to begin now. So she dons a fedora, paints her lips with her trademark Orange Fire, and steps back in time to venture out on perhaps what will be her most memorable journey of all.
The author found inspiration to write about the real Margaret Fishback (who we know as Lillian Boxfish) after impeccable research of her personal papers. Truly a pioneer in the advertising world during the years of the Great Depression, Fishback's extraordinary fictional life began to take shape over time, and the result is quite captivating.
Told with compassion, humor, and a deep understanding of growing old, I highly recommend taking a walk with Lillian...so glad I did.
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