The Pink Suit

Kelby cleverly combines historical fact with fiction in this engaging tale of a talented seamstress and her quest to find love and happiness. Kate is an Irish immigrant living in 1960s New York and working as a seamstress at Chez Ninon, a Park Avenue dress shop. As a devout Catholic, Kate starts her days with mass and works tirelessly at the dress shop before returning home late in the day. The highlight of her work involves the shop's most important client, the Wife, First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy. And Kate's primary focus is creating the Wife's pink suit, a Chanel creation copied by Chez Ninon to fulfill the Wife's every expectation. Facing the dilemma of many working women, Kate seeks to find balance between her increasingly demanding job and her budding relationship with Patrick Harris, a local butcher. The disparity between her possible future as a butcher's wife or a principal partner in a dress shop is not lost on Kate, and throughout she struggles with the promise of love or fortune. Kelby excels brilliantly at imbuing the reader with the ability to see the beauty of fabric and design through Kate's eyes, as well as to personally feel the depths of emotion in Kate's difficult life choices. (Apr.)