Posts mostly about swing era novels, modern novels set in the era, biographies and how-to books. If you have a book you’d like The Girl in the Jitterbug Dress to review please contact her at: https://www.girlinthejitterbugdress.com/about-tam-francis/contact-tam/
Summertime is a time to slow down, let the sun tickle your toes as it slips into twilight. Grab a crisp cocktail, find a hammock or porch swing, and curl up with a fun, fast book. I have ten picks for summer reading ala vintage fun. I read all genres of novels, but in the summertime, […more…]
~ Romeo Blue: Vintage Book Reviewer ~ by Tam Francis The Synopsis Romeo Blue (Scholastic, 2013), by Phoebe Stone is the sequel to the Romeo and Juliet Code (although I didn’t know when I bought Romeo Blue, but the book stands on its own, anyway). In this Young Adult Fiction (ages ten and up), the […more…]
Hemingway Book Club Cocktails and More with Vintage Flair by Tam Francis When I first moved to my small Texas town, everyone was plenty friendly in the way that Southerners are, but what I mistook for friendship was mere politeness, and it took me over a year to figure it out. I love to read […more…]
~ Call the Midwife: Vintage Reviewer ~ by Tam Francis The Synopsis Call the Midwife (Penguin Group, 20o9), originally The Midwife (Orion, 2002), by Jennifer Worth is a memoir of birth, joy, and hard times set in post WWII England against the backdrop of the East End of London, generations of families living, loving, birthing, and […more…]
~ The Secret Life of Dresses: Vintage Reviewer Book Review ~ by Tam Francis The Synopsis The Secret Life of Dresses (5-Spot Hachette Book Group, 2011), by Erin McKean is the story of a young college girl realizing her potential through the secret life of the dresses she begins to wear. When Dora’s grandmother unexpectedly ends […more…]
The Paris Wife: 1920s Hemingway’s Hadley Book Review by Tam Francis The Synopsis The Paris Wife written by Paula McLain (2012 Random House), tells the story of Ernest Hemingway’s first wife Hadley Richardson at the cusp of Hemingway’s writing career. The story opens with Hadley visiting friends in Chicago and meeting the pre-published Hemingway. McLain gives […more…]
~Some Girls, Some Hats And Hitler: Book Review with a Vintage Slant~ By Tam Francis The Synopsis Some Girls, Some Hats and Hitler by Trudi Kanter (originally self published in 1984, republished by Virago Press 2012), is part love story, part Holocaust, and very much vintage fashion and lifestyle memoir. We follow Trudi, a half-Jewish milliner, […more…]
Hotel at the Corner of Bitter and Sweet: Vintage Reviewer by Tam Francis As I was writing The Girl in the Jitterbug Dress (a story told in a parallel narrative with two points of view), my mother insisted I read this book. She thought it similar to my novel and thought I’d love it. It […more…]