Amanda Rosenbloom finds a diary written by Olive Westcott from the early 1900's and starts to live through Olive in certain aspects. The owner of a vintage clothing store, Amanda Rosenbloom, goes on a call at this apartment in Manhattan to see if she can buy some of an old woman's clothing. The woman, Jane Kelly, is obviously wealthy and a bit cantankerous, but has an assistant who helps Amanda when she purchases a trunk filled with items from long ago. Once Amanda gets the trunk home and finds a diary written by someone named Olive Westcott from almost one hundred years earlier, her life gets strange and she witnesses the past through this woman's eyes.
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Amanda, who is unsuccessful in trying to break off her affair with a married man, needs to figure out what is transpiring since she finds herself witnessing what Olive went through as a woman in the early 1900's. Olive wants to work within the clothing industry, but discouraged by the era. The book goes back and forth from present day to the past. Amanda's love life is sketchy and she has been told that her store, Astor Place Vintage, will need to move because the landlord has told her he is not renewing her lease.
What was intriguing about this novel is watching Amanda be in the same places that Olive was in a hundred years earlier. Amanda is transported back in time in her mind thanks to the diary she has found and discovers that she and Olive have a lot in common: women trying to get ahead in the world, in spite of having such difficult odds. When Olive is a young woman her previously comfortable life takes a tailspin due to her father's unexpected death. Instead of living with family that she is not fond of, she attempts to make it on her own in Manhattan. Olive reveals in her diary about her questions regarding sex and the female body, but is embarrassed to ask anyone what it all means. Even though she is naïve in this aspect of her life, she has taken it upon herself to try to get to know the mind of a clothing buyer. In spite of her father having sent her to finishing school and his early attempts at having her groomed for marriage to a society person, Olive finds that she'd much prefer getting into the clothing business and wants to know the mind of a customer. Without telling her father, Olive answers an ad to be an assistant buyer for Macy's, which is in competition with her father's store, Woolworths. As Amanda reads through the diary, she starts to see similarities in Olive's life and her own and begins to make decisions based on what she is discovering in the diary.
At the conclusion, Amanda realizes the diary she's found should be returned to Jane Kelly, who she believes is related to Olive. Could she be Olive's daughter? Amanda returns the diary, but there are many open-ended questions: Does Jane read the diary? Does Amanda start dating Jane's assistant? Did Olive open her own shop? This leads the reader to think that there may be another novel in the works where Amanda and Olive return. We'll see.
Best part of story, including ending:
I enjoyed the descriptions of the time period when Olive lived in Manhattan.
Best scene in story:
When Amanda Rosenbloom started going through the trunk, the author hinted there was something more than clothing awaiting the reader. When Amanda found the diary, I was looking forward to keep reading and discovering who had written it. (At first, I believed it had been Jane Kelly's diary.)
Opinion about the main character:
Amanda Rosenbloom had a passion for vintage clothing, but I also appreciated her desire to know more about that particular era as well and how she started to feel compassion toward a woman she'd never met.
