Flight from Fifth Avenue

Engaging characters, lively prose and unusual twists (including a surprise ending) breathe new life into the classic plot about a young girl rebelling against an arranged marriage. Rae's (The Ship's Clock) period piece is told in flashback by Maida Jardine, who, as the novel opens in 1962, is celebrating her 50th wedding anniversary. Fifty years earlier, however, the girl fled her family's posh Fifth Avenue home to avoid marrying an unattractive English nobleman selected by her royalty-obsessed mother. Aided by money from her doting father, the gutsy heroine takes on an alias and several jobs in her bid for independence (as a seamstress, she narrowly escapes death in the tragic Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire). A clandestine return to the family manse leads to several highly charged confrontations, a notorious trial and, years later, one family member's startling admission. Although Rae's attempt at period dialogue occasionally seems stilted and Maida's romance with the handsome lawyer who at first has no idea of her real identity, and later becomes her husband, lacks sizzle, this diverting melodrama compensates with nicely etched historical detail. . (Feb.)