Through the Looking Glass Children's Book Reviews
Diva Audio
Fiction
For ages 14 and up
Unabridged audiobook (CD)
Performed/read by: Abby Craden
Listening Library , 2012 ISBN: 978-0307746993
Not that long ago Gloria Carmody was one of the most celebrated debutants in Chicago. Now she is in jail in New York City accused of murdering a gangster. She did indeed kill the gangster, shooting him to protect her lover, a young African-American pianist. Thanks in part to an article that her cousin Clara wrote, Gloria has the support of the masses, but she is still in jail. Then an FBI agent makes her an offer. All she needs to do is to find out all there is to know about Forrest Hamilton, a rich young man, and the agent will make sure that she doesn’t have to do any more jail time.
Gloria, being famous, is soon able to get close to Forrest, and he even invites her to stay at his luxurious mansion in Great Neck. With a trunk full of glamorous dresses supplied by the FBI, Gloria sets about trying to find out where young Forrest got his money. The FBI is convinced that the young man is up to his eyebrows in shady dealings.
Meanwhile, Gloria’s cousin Clara is getting tired of her life. All she does is go to parties, gets drunk, and writes about the doings of rich young things for the Manhattanite. She begins to wish that she could write articles that have more meaning. More than anything she wishes she and her former boyfriend, Marcus, were back together, but Marcus is engaged to marry a beautiful Barnard student and he wants nothing to do with Clara.
Marcus wants nothing to do with Lorraine either, who still has a crush on him in spite of everything. Lorraine’s college experience is not going as planned at all. She is not popular, boys are not flocking around her, and in fact she is being avoided and ignored by everyone except her roommate and a bookish young Columbia student called Melvin.
Seemingly on different paths, Gloria, Clara, and Lorraine are actually still connected, and though they don’t know it, they are headed for a collision that may wreck their lives.
In this final chapter in the Flappers trilogy, the author brings her characters together one last time, giving them the opportunity to fix the messes they have got themselves into. The three girls who started their adventures in Chicago have learned a lot about themselves and about the world, but they still have to figure out how to let the past go and reach for the right future.
