In 1924 a young vaudeville actress takes on the role of a lifetime when she impersonates a missing heiress in this 2012 MB/MWA First Novel Competition winner.
In 1917 Jessie Carr, fourteen years old and sole heiress to her family's vast fortune, disappeared without a trace. Now, years later, her uncle Oliver Beckett thinks he's found her: a young actress in a vaudeville playhouse is a dead ringer for his missing niece. But when Oliver confronts the girl, he learns he's wrong. Orphaned young, Leah's been acting since she was a toddler.
Oliver, never one to miss an opportunity, makes a proposition—with his coaching, Leah can impersonate Jessie, claim the fortune, and split it with him. The role of a lifetime, he says. A one-way ticket to Sing Sing, she hears. But when she's let go from her job, Oliver's offer suddenly looks a lot more appealing. Leah agrees to the con but secretly promises herself to try and find out what happened to the real Jessie. There's only one problem: Leah's act won't fool the one person who knows the truth about Jessie's disappearance.
Set against a Prohibition-era backdrop of speakeasies and vaudeville houses, Mary Miley's The Impersonator will delight readers with its elaborate mystery and lively prose.
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“Mary Miley has delivered a tale that lures us into the dangerous underworld of Prohibition: rum smugglers, bootleggers, and the glamorous lost realm of vaudeville, ruled by troupers like Mae West, W. C. Fields, Eddie Cantor, and Jack Benny, a realm so real that we can almost smell the greasepaint. The Impersonator is an exciting debut that climaxes at the very tip of the rockbound coast of the Pacific Northwest, in a literal cliffhanger!”
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Katherine Neville, New York Times bestselling author