{"product_id":"the-magnificent-esme-wells-a-novel-isbn-9780062684837","title":"The Magnificent Esme Wells: A Novel","description":"\u003cp\u003eFrom the nationally bestselling author of \u003cem\u003eThe True Memoirs of Little K,\u003c\/em\u003e a deeply felt and historically detailed novel of family, loss, and love, told by an irrepressible young girl—the daughter of a two-bit gangster and a movie showgirl—growing up in golden-age Hollywood and Las Vegas in its early days.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eEsme Silver has always taken care of her charming ne’er-do-well father, Ike Silver, a small-time crook with dreams of making it big with Bugsy Siegel. Devoted to her daddy, Esme is often his \"date\" at the racetrack, where she amiably fetches the hot dogs while keeping an eye to the ground for any cast-off tickets that may be winners.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn awe of her mother, Dina Wells, Esme is more than happy to be the foil who gets the beautiful Dina into meetings and screen tests with some of Hollywood’s greats. When Ike gets an opportunity to move to Vegas—and, in what could at last be his big break, to help the man she knows as \"Benny\" open the Flamingo Hotel—life takes an unexpected turn for Esme. A stunner like her mother, the young girl catches the attention of Nate Stein, one of the Strip’s most powerful men.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eNarrated by the twenty-year-old Esme, \u003cem\u003eThe Magnificent Esme Wells\u003c\/em\u003e moves between pre–WWII Hollywood and postwar Las Vegas—a golden age when Jewish gangsters and movie moguls were often indistinguishable in looks and behavior. Esme’s voice—sharp, observant, and with a quiet, mordant wit—chronicles the rise and fall and further fall of her complicated parents, as well as her own painful reckoning with love and life. A coming-of-age story with a tinge of noir, and a tale that illuminates the promise and perils of the American dream and its dreamers, \u003cem\u003eThe Magnificent Esme Wells\u003c\/em\u003e is immersive, moving, and compelling.\u003c\/p\u003e | \u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSet in golden age Hollywood and the burgeoning days of Las Vegas, \u003cem\u003eThe Magnificent Esme Wells\u003c\/em\u003e is a dazzling, bittersweet story of family, love, and deception. We follow Esme—the irrepressible daughter of a Mafia gofer and a Busby Berkeley showgirl—as she comes of age amid racetracks and casinos, mobsters and starlets, on her path to becoming the first burlesque artist on the Las Vegas Strip.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eYoung Esme Wells spends her days where no child should. She wanders the Hollywood Park racetrack trailing her gambling-obsessed father, and the MGM soundstages following her too-beautiful chorus-girl mother, both parents bit players in the big, jostling worlds of mobsters and movie moguls of late 1930s Los Angeles. Illiterate, unkempt, intelligent, and willful, Esme is as ambitious as her parents, and these three opportunists struggle to force the world to open up its fortunes to them. When her father moves to Las Vegas just after the war—to help Bugsy Siegel open his famous Flamingo Hotel—Esme accompanies him. And there, the daughter, now a stunner like her mother, catches the attention of one of the new Strip’s most powerful men.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eNarrated by the twentysomething Esme, \u003cem\u003eThe Magnificent Esme Wells\u003c\/em\u003e moves between pre–WWII Hollywood and postwar Las Vegas—a golden age when gangsters and movie moguls were often indistinguishable in their scramble for power. Esme’s voice—sharp, observant, with a quiet, mordant wit—chronicles the rise and fall and further fall of her complicated parents, as well as of her own painful reckoning with love and life. A coming-of-age story with a tinge of noir, \u003cem\u003eThe Magnificent Esme Wells\u003c\/em\u003e portrays the promises and perils of the American dream and its dreamers.\u003c\/p\u003e | \u003cp\u003e“This lovely novel, alternately dark and funny, is a powerful examination of both the nature of love and the will to survive.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eAyelet Waldman, author of Love and Treasure\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Adrienne Sharp sure can WRITE! And her newest novel, \u003cem\u003eThe Magnificent Esme Wells\u003c\/em\u003e, does all the best things: it transports, amuses, delights and heartbreaks. What a gem of a book.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eJennifer Gilmore, New York Times bestselling author of Golden Country and The Mothers\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Esme’s dramatic and irresistible story sparkles with psychological nuance, sumptuous detail, and vivid historical perceptions as Sharp tracks the high wattage success and violence of tough Jews building movie and casino empires while Hitler bloodied Europe. With real-life figures, mushroom clouds rising from desert test sites, and arresting insights into the power and vulnerability of a daring woman performer, Sharp’s novel, like Jennifer Egan’s \u003cem\u003eManhattan Beach \u003c\/em\u003e(2017), is propulsive and profound. ” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eDonna Seaman, Booklist (starred review)\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Sharp’s novel, like Jennifer Egan’s \u003cem\u003eManhattan Beach\u003c\/em\u003e (2017), is propulsive and profound.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eBooklist (starred review)\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“This glittering noirish tragedy, with its lushly imagined period landscape and subtle feminist trajectory, is both fun to read and sad to think about.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eKirkus Reviews (starred review)\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Amidst the glittering allure of 1940s and 50s Hollywood and Las Vegas, young Esme Wells tends to her petty crook dad and wannabe star mom, turning showgirl—and moll—alongside a star-studded cast including Bugsy Siegel, Virginia Hill and Jimmy Durante. Violent and voluptuous; heartbreaking and profound, \u003cem\u003eThe Magnificent Esme Wells\u003c\/em\u003e is about the losses we endure, and the love we keep betting on, despite the odds. Truly, a showstopper.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eCaroline Leavitt, New York Times bestselling author of Pictures of You and Cruel Beautiful World\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Esme is street-smart and tough but vulnerable. . . . a memorable character in an unforgettable era.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eLouisa Ermelino, Publishers Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Consider it your good luck to join Esme Wells as she comes of age with the glamour, gangsters, and big dreams of Hollywood and Las Vegas of the 30s and 40s. Like its narrator, this novel is magnificent.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eAnn Hood, author of The Book That Matters Most and The Knitting Circle\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Violent and voluptuous; heartbreaking and profound, \u003cem\u003eThe Magnificent Esme Wells \u003c\/em\u003eis about the losses we endure, and the love we keep betting on, despite the odds. Truly, a showstopper.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eCaroline Leavitt, New York Times bestselling author of Pictures of You and Cruel Beautiful World\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“WWII-era LA and postwar Vegas come vibrantly alive in this detailed, noir portrait of a Paper Moon-style childhood.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003ePeople\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“[I]n this lush saga of the new American West... Adrienne Sharp has given us a protagonist to hope for and a powerful new version of the American dream.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eRon Carlson\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“How Esme keeps her head, if not her innocence, among these fast-living, fast-dying Vegas and Hollywood stars makes Adrienne Sharp’s novel fascinating and rich with secrets she tells with wit and gusto.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eRosellen Brown, author of Before and After\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“In \u003cem\u003eThe Magnificent Esme Wells\u003c\/em\u003e, Adrienne Sharp brilliantly recreates the tawdry magic of twin dream machines, studio-era Hollywood and early Las Vegas, in this tale of a boom- and-bust childhood of the scrappy, precocious Esme Wells, her go-for-broke parents, and the toll these dreams took on their dreamers.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eJanet Fitch, New York Times bestselling author of White Oleander\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Adrienne Sharp brilliantly recreates the tawdry magic of twin dream machines, studio-era Hollywood and early Las Vegas, in this tale of . . . the scrappy, precocious Esme Wells, her go-for-broke parents, and the toll these dreams took on their dreamers.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eJanet Fitch, New York Times bestselling author of White Oleander\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Harper","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44888474255589,"sku":"NP9780062684837","price":26.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780062684837.jpg?v=1730229162","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/the-magnificent-esme-wells-a-novel-isbn-9780062684837","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}