The Subway Girls

The Subway Girls by Susi Orman Schnall   320 pages

My new favorite writer, Fiona Davis, called this novel “dazzling and delicious,” and  I wholeheartedly agree. I read this dualing timelines story in one day. It was so captivating that I didn’t mind a four-hour wait at the airport for my plane to arrive. I couldn’t have been better prepared for a long wait than with this wonderful book.

The first timeline begins in the spring of 1949. Charlotte is a senior at New York City’s Hunter College, studying advertising. She dreams of becoming a junior copywriter but is realistic to know that her hopes of making it out of the typing pool are slim to none.

Times are tight in Brooklyn, where Charlotte lives with her parents. She has a steady beau who wants to marry her, but she wants to try her hand at a career first. Her father is a strict and cold man, man of few words. When his hardware store begins to fail, he insists that Charlotte leave school and help him in the store. Charlotte does help out, but refuses to abandon her studies; she only has a semester left.

Also happening in New York City is latest the latest advertising campaign for the transit system, a beauty contest that selects one young woman a month to wear the crown of Miss Subways. Charlotte concocts a scheme that if she enters and wins, she can use that platform as a way to save her father’s store. Based on the real-life Miss Subways campaign that ran between 1941 and 1976, Charlotte’s timeline captures a lost piece of New York City history.

The second time also begins in the spring, but the year is 2018. Olivia is an account executive with an advertising company that she, sort of, co-founded with a former colleague. The company has been losing business steadily and is on the brink of collapse. Thanks to a chance meeting in a bar, the company gets an opportunity to pitch a new campaign to the New York Transit System.  In her research, Olivia stumbles upon the Miss Subways campaign, and it here that Charlotte and Olivia intersect.

I loved this story. It pulled me in from the first page and didn’t let up until the ending that left me with a smile and a quiet cheer to myself.  “The Subway Girls” receives 6 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world.