Once upon a time, when a respectable young lady traveled to the big, bad city, she was accompanied by a chaperone, lest anyone get the wrong idea about her virtue. The Chaperone by Laura Moriarty is a fictionalized tale about a Wichita woman in 1922 who was hired to accompany a 15-year-old Louise Brooks to New York City for the summer so the teen could attend a dance school. Only a few years later, Louise Brooks became a world famous silent film star. It’s a picturesque tale of that Great Gatsby-era when women bobbed their hair and rising hemlines had everyone in a tizzy. If you love the peek at the changing roles of women on “Mad Men” in the 1960s, you’ll love The Chaperone to see how roles were even changing for their mothers a generation before. [$26.95, Powells]
