About the Story
Set in New Orleans in 1898, The Mannequin Maker follows Maurice Latour, a young entrepreneur dedicated to breaking into the nascent ready-wear fashion industry by manufacturing dress forms.
His first customer is Rebecca Tabor, a college graduate determined to inherit her father’s department store despite her gender.
As the would-be power couple begin to develop feelings, Maurice struggles to overcome a childhood obsession with the brothel mistress who raised him. Unable to extricate himself from the demimonde, he commits a crime of passion from which his business—and his new romance—can never recover.
Complete at 80,000 words, this historical fiction manuscript is available upon request.
At the end of the Mississippi, where all the silt runs down, and you can’t dig for fear of sinking, and even the grasses drown in the encroaching ocean, and small bits of the soft land float away, lies the City of New Orleans. Blink in a hurricane, and it will be gone: its mausoleums flooded, its surnames washed beneath the brackish swamp waters. But in 1898, the century was turning on an engine made of steam, buildings rose to the sky, and electric light made daytime endless. At dawn, the filaments burned in their streetlamps as Maurice Latour was propelled into port. Standing on the prow of the ocean liner from Paris, he looked at the letter and hoped his father had died.