Etiquette for Runaways

Liza Nash Taylor

Elizabeth Evans (Narrator)

02-17-20

11hrs 55min

Abridgement

Unabridged

Genre

Fiction/Historical

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Play Audio Sample

02-17-20

11hrs 55min

Abridgement

Unabridged

Genre

Fiction/Historical

Description

“This is a great coming-of-age novel about life lessons, loyalty, and forgiveness in a fast-spinning, glittering world full of temptation and opportunity. Beautifully done!” Kathleen Grissom, New York Times bestselling author of The Kitchen House and Glory over Everything

A Parade Magazine Pick of Best Summer Beach Reads
A Frolic Pick of Best Books of Summer

A sweeping Jazz Age tale of regret, ambition, and redemption inspired by true events, including the Great Moonshine Conspiracy Trial of 1935 and Josephine Baker’s 1925 Paris debut in La Revue Nègre

1924. May Marshall is determined to spend the dog days of summer in self-imposed exile at her father’s farm in Keswick, Virginia. Following a naive dalliance that led to heartbreak and her expulsion from Mary Baldwin College, May returns home with a shameful secret only to find her father’s orchard is now the site of a lucrative moonshining enterprise. Despite warnings from the one man she trusts—her childhood friend Byrd—she joins her father’s illegal business. When authorities close in and her father, Henry, is arrested, May goes on the run.

May arrives in New York City, determined to reinvent herself as May Valentine and succeed on her own terms, following her mother’s footsteps as a costume designer. The Jazz Age city glitters with both opportunity and the darker temptations of cocaine and nightlife. From a start mending sheets at the famed Biltmore Hotel, May falls into a position designing costumes for a newly formed troupe of African American entertainers bound for Paris. Reveling in her good fortune, May will do anything for the chance to go abroad, and the lines between right and wrong begin to blur. When Byrd shows up in New York, intent upon taking May back home, she pushes him, and her past, away.

In Paris, May’s run of luck comes to a screeching halt, spiraling her into darkness as she unravels a painful secret about her past. May must make a choice: surrender to failure and addiction, or face the truth and make amends to those she has wronged. But first, she must find self-forgiveness before she can try to reclaim what her heart craves most.

Praise

“This is a great coming-of-age novel about life lessons, loyalty, and forgiveness in a fast-spinning, glittering world full of temptation and opportunity. Beautifully done!” Kathleen Grissom, New York Times bestselling author of The Kitchen House and Glory over Everything

Etiquette for Runaways is a complex, fascinating novel full of wonderful characters and more than a little heartbreak. May Marshall is a heroine to cheer for, a girl who dares all to confront her own demons and achieve her dreams in New York and Paris. The writing is glorious, the story is completely engaging. This is a must-read.” Jeanne Mackin, author The Last Collection: A Novel of Elsa Schiaparelli and Coco Chanel

“Liza Nash Taylor has written a dazzling book that explores the hidden dreams and shifting sorrows of an amazing character, May Marshall. Taylor weaves May’s travails, travels, and triumphs into a multiplicity of wonders: generational mystery, moonshine intrigue, mother-daughter heartache, Jazz Age glitter, and a love story that lingers long after the last page is turned. Etiquette for Runaways is a must-read, remarkable, and sumptuous debut.” Connie May Fowler, author of Before Women Had Wings

“Fasten your seatbelts, for Etiquette for Runaways is an effervescent and completely unpredictable ride from Virginia to New York to Paris with brave and complicated May Marshall. Trust me, this is one fabulous book that will keep you turning pages.” Nancy Thayer, New York Times bestselling author of Girls of Summer

“Taylor’s sweeping coming-of-age story is utterly engrossing, exquisitely rendered, and deeply felt, with a rich cast of characters that linger in the heart and mind long after the final page is read. May Marshall is a heroine for any age—Jazz or otherwise—and her battles feel as intimate and immediately recognizable as our own.” Stephanie Barron, author of That Churchill Woman

“Exquisitely written, Liza Nash Taylor’s Etiquette for Runaways is a powerful tale of seeking absolution and pursuing dreams. It’s a magnificent, special novel that I didn’t want to end.” Alan Hlad, international bestselling author of The Long Flight Home

“Assured, exotic, heart wrenching, Liza Nash Taylor’s Etiquette for Runaways is that rare debut novel that combines a story that sweeps from continent to continent and age to age without sacrificing the deeply personal story of one tormented woman. Taylor’s May Marshall is the new woman of a previous century, a jazz dolly with a scarred past and a hungry heart who wants forgiveness from the only one who cannot give it—herself.” Jacquelyn Mitchard, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Deep End of the Ocean

“An utterly absorbing tale of the trials of being a young woman of independent spirit during the glamorous but harsh years of post-WWI America, when the yearning for personal freedoms clashed with the heavy hand of prohibition, politics, and social mores. I could almost taste the smoky, moonshine-laced air of the speakeasies, and feel flashes of fringed tassels on my skin as I read. Beautiful and immersive writing!” Natasha Boyd, USA Today bestselling author of The Indigo Girl

“After women won the right to vote in 1920, the decade ahead stretched before them as a glittering path to new opportunity. It was the jazz age. But in her debut novel, Etiquette for Runways, Liza Nash Taylor reveals a darker side of those famously dazzling years as a woman alone fights to carve her niche in the world of fashion design. Ambition. Greed. Betrayal. Redemption. From rural Virginia to New York city to Paris, through beautiful prose and vivid historical details I felt the pain and the joy of one woman’s struggle to succeed against the odds. I did not want this book to end.” Pamela Binnings Ewen, author of The Queen of Paris

“With deeply compelling characters intertwined in a story steeped in history, international travel, jazz, secrets, passion, addiction, heartbreaks, temptations, and more, Liza Nash Taylor delivers a page-turning book that will captivate readers from beginning to end. This is an exceptional debut novel from a very capable storyteller who has perfected her craft. Hopefully, this is a first book of many in the historical fiction genre by this author.” Dian Griesel, a.k.a. @SilverDisobedience, author of The Silver Disobedience Playbook

“[A] delightful beach read with an edge…Etiquette for Runaways marks a debut for Liza Nash Taylor that shows a remarkable ability to weave together multiple sources of inspiration into an entertaining whole…Readers will find themselves swept along with May as easily as if her adventures were all about diamonds and fur coats.” Shelf Awareness

“A veritable saga of an original novel by an author with a genuine flair for the kind of riveting, narrative-driven storytelling that holds the reader’s rapt attention from first page to last…Recommended.” Midwest Book Review

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Details
More Information
Language English
Release Day Feb 16, 2020
Release Date February 17, 2020
Release Date Machine 1581897600
Imprint Blackstone Publishing
Provider Blackstone Publishing
Categories New in Paperback, Black Friday Sale, Literature & Fiction, Historical Fiction, Book Club, Fiction - All, Fiction - Adult, Book Club Favorites
Author Bio
Liza Nash Taylor

Liza Nash Taylor, the author of Etiquette for Runaways, was a 2018 Hawthornden International Fellow and received her MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts. The 2016 winner of the San Miguel Writer’s Conference Fiction Prize, her work has appeared in Microchondria II, Gargoyle Magazine, and Deep South, amongst others. A native Virginian, she lives in Keswick with her husband and dogs.

Narrator Bio
Elizabeth Evans

Elizabeth Evans has received many grants and fellowships for her writing, including an NEA Fellowship, the James Michener Fellowship, and fellowships at Yaddo and MacDowell. She is the author of The Blue Hour and lives in Tucson, Arizona.

Overview

A Parade Magazine Pick of Best Summer Beach Reads
A Frolic Pick of Best Books of Summer

A sweeping Jazz Age tale of regret, ambition, and redemption inspired by true events, including the Great Moonshine Conspiracy Trial of 1935 and Josephine Baker’s 1925 Paris debut in La Revue Nègre

1924. May Marshall is determined to spend the dog days of summer in self-imposed exile at her father’s farm in Keswick, Virginia. Following a naive dalliance that led to heartbreak and her expulsion from Mary Baldwin College, May returns home with a shameful secret only to find her father’s orchard is now the site of a lucrative moonshining enterprise. Despite warnings from the one man she trusts—her childhood friend Byrd—she joins her father’s illegal business. When authorities close in and her father, Henry, is arrested, May goes on the run.

May arrives in New York City, determined to reinvent herself as May Valentine and succeed on her own terms, following her mother’s footsteps as a costume designer. The Jazz Age city glitters with both opportunity and the darker temptations of cocaine and nightlife. From a start mending sheets at the famed Biltmore Hotel, May falls into a position designing costumes for a newly formed troupe of African American entertainers bound for Paris. Reveling in her good fortune, May will do anything for the chance to go abroad, and the lines between right and wrong begin to blur. When Byrd shows up in New York, intent upon taking May back home, she pushes him, and her past, away.

In Paris, May’s run of luck comes to a screeching halt, spiraling her into darkness as she unravels a painful secret about her past. May must make a choice: surrender to failure and addiction, or face the truth and make amends to those she has wronged. But first, she must find self-forgiveness before she can try to reclaim what her heart craves most.