The Chaperone

In the gripping book The Chaperone, Louise Brooks' irreverent attitude is chaperoned by a lady to New York City in 1922, and the summer that followed would transform both of them.

Just a few years before to rising to fame as a silent cinema performer and becoming a generation icon, fifteen-year-old Louise Brooks travels from Wichita, Kansas, to New York City to learn dance at the renowned Denishawn School of Dancing. She is accompanied, much to her displeasure, by a thirty-six-year-old chaperone who is neither a friend nor a mother. Unaware of what she is in for, Cora Carlisle is a complex but conventional lady with her own motives for travelling. Already very attractive and wearing her well-known black bob with harsh fringe, young Louise is infamous for her conceit and disregard for tradition. In the end, their lives will be permanently changed by the five weeks they spend together.

While Cora does her best to keep an eye on Louise in this unfamiliar and busy environment, she also sets out on a journey of her own because she believes that the city may contain the key to a finding that would ultimately address the question at the centre of her existence. Even if what she discovers isn't what she was expecting, she is freed in a manner she never could have predicted. Cora's eyes are opened to the potential of the twentieth century and a fresh perspective on what it is to be truly alive during her relationship with Louise.

Laura Moriarty's The Chaperone draws from the rich history of the 1920s, 1930s, and beyond, including the orphan trains, Prohibition, flappers, the start of the Great Depression, and the growing movement for equal rights and new opportunities for women. It shows how quickly values and attitudes, as well as fashion and hemlines, were changing during this time, and how much of a difference it made for Louise Brooks, Cora Carlisle, and others like them.