I have Lorraine Zago Rosenthal here today to talk about her newest book, New Money.
I'm part of the blog tour and I have an exclusive excerpt from the book below.
Tina had a constant cash flow, but unlike most of the girls I’d grown up with, she’d never been snooty about the fact that I didn’t. She nodded, the light changed, and she hit the gas. “You mean you need money to get your car fixed? Don’t worry about that… I’ll take you anywhere you want to go.”
“I know. I appreciate it, but I’m not going to keep imposing on you. I need my own car, and I also need to help Mom. Business has been slow… the bills are piling up.”
Tina drove me to an upscale outdoor mall where I handed in applications at Sephora and Banana Republic and eight other stores before catching up with her at the bridal shop where we’d planned to meet. She was leaning against its front window and twirling her hair.
“Maybe I should apply here,” I said, peeking in the window. Tina was covering part of it, and all I could see was half of a mannequin dressed in a white organza gown.
She shook her head. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
I kept trying to look into the store, but she blocked me. “Why isn’t it a good idea? And what are you doing?” I asked impatiently. “Get out of the way.”
She folded her arms over her low-cut blouse and didn’t move. “Forget this place, Savannah. It’s filled with snobby women like my stepmother. You don’t want to work here.” She draped an arm around my shoulders, shoved my head down so I was staring at cement, and led me away.
The smell of her mango perfume was suffocating in the heat, and I wasn’t in the mood for whatever game she was playing. I disconnected myself from her and headed back to the store.
She tried to stop me, but it was too late. I stared through the bridal shop’s window at a pretty redhead admiring her reflection in a full-length mirror. She wore a flowing wedding dress, and her mother and a saleslady beamed at her. She looked like a princess. Cinderella. Somebody’s dream.
I swallowed. This was why Tina had tried to keep me away.
She was beside me. “It doesn’t matter. It isn’t what you wanted.”
That’s what I’d thought two years ago, when Jamie bought a diamond ring and asked me to marry him. He was in law school at the University of South Carolina then. He’d wanted to tie the knot when he graduated, buy a house in a fancy area nearby called Mount Pleasant—where Tina lived—and have babies, in his own words, ASAP.
Only that wasn’t what I wanted. I wanted to go places, see things, and write award-winning novels that would fly off bookstore shelves. I’d thought that none of those things would happen if I became what he expected: a stay-at-home mom who ate lunch with attorneys’ wives and spent her free time getting massages and manicures.
It had been so hard to end it. But he just wouldn’t wait, and I couldn’t blame him. I knew how it felt to want things. The problem was that lately, I’d been thinking that everything I wanted was never going to happen. I’d been wondering if I’d made a terrible mistake.
“I didn’t know they were getting married so soon,” I said, my voice raw and tight. But I should have known. Jamie had graduated recently. Maybe I’d been blocking it out.
I’d heard about the engagement a while back. The bride was a girl from my high school class who’d been on the cheerleading squad with me and Tina, but Jamie was a year ahead of us and had barely known her then. Now she worked as a paralegal at a law office downtown, and the rumor was that they’d hooked up when he clerked there.
“Yeah,” Tina said. “I heard about it last week.”
I turned away from the window. “Thanks for not telling me.”
She smiled. The bells on the bridal’s shop door jangled, the door swung open, and there was the redhead with the saleslady calling after her, nervously warning against stepping outside because the sidewalk would dirty her hem.
The bride went by two first names. She’d been one of those pageant contestants with a pushy mother who’d dressed her up in high heels and a thick layer of makeup like a six-year-old prostitute. She’d also been my nemesis from eighth through eleventh grade. Now she gave me a phony smile and spoke in a sugary voice as she lingered in the doorway.
“Savannah, are you stalking me?” she asked.
“Don’t flatter yourself, Eva Lee,” I said.
“Seriously,” Tina added. “Savannah has better things to do.”
Sure, I thought. I have better things to do, like resume my desperate search for a minimum-wage job while this empty-headed debutante gets ready to marry the only guy I’ve ever loved.
New Money by Lorraine Zago Rosenthal
Published: Thomas Dunne Books (September 10th, 2013)
Reading Level: Adult
Hardcover: 336 pages
Summary:
A young Southern woman of modest means suddenly finds herself thrust into New York's high society when she discovers that she is the illegitimate daughter of a recently-deceased billionaire.
Savannah Morgan had high hopes. She dreamed of becoming a writer and escaping her South Carolina town, where snooty debutantes have always looked down on her. But at twenty-four, she's become a frustrated ex-cheerleader who lives with her mother and wonders if rejecting a marriage proposal was a terrible mistake. Then Savannah's world is shaken when she learns the father she never knew is Edward Stone, a billionaire media mogul who has left Savannah his fortune on the condition that she move to Manhattan and work at his global news corporation. Putting aside her mother's disapproval, Savannah dives head first into a life of wealth and luxury that is threatened by Edward's other children--the infuriatingly arrogant Ned and his sharp-tongued sister, Caroline, whose joint mission is to get rid of Savannah. She deals with their treachery along with her complicated love life, and she eventually has to decide between Jack, a smooth and charming real estate executive, and Alex, a handsome aspiring writer/actor. Savannah must navigate a thrilling but dangerous city while trying to figure out what kind of man her father truly was.
New Money is a keenly observed, exciting peek into a world of privilege and glamour with a spirited and charming heroine at its center.
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