Blonde Dust
It is 2000, and Pauline is a horse veterinarian in her 60s, happily working with animals and enjoying her grandchildren in California when she hears that the Mapes Hotel is about to be demolished. Shadows from Pauline’s life at the Mapes, where she worked as a cleaner from 1957 until 1960, compel her to go and see the hotel’s destruction.
An 18-year-old unwed mother in the 1950s, Pauline finds steady work at the luxurious Mapes Hotel where she cleans and spends most of her time on her knees. But one day, fate brings Pauline up to a room where a woman will change Pauline’s life. This occupant of Suite 614, known as Mrs. Miller, turns out to be Marilyn Monroe.
Thinking about the Mapes Hotel carries Pauline back through her memories as a child in France, and what led her mother to make the decisions that would structure Pauline’s childhood. De Rosnay takes readers back to those years, telling the story through shifting chronologies so that we can piece Pauline’s memories together right along with her. Somehow a story told slightly out of order feels more natural and seamless than a straight chronological tale would have. Readers get to learn Pauline’s history while realizing that her memories of the Mapes are wrapped up in her encounters with the one and only Marilyn Monroe.
Though we never see Marilyn’s point of view, Pauline’s memories are sympathetic to the person she saw literally behind closed doors, helping readers glimpse a real human being rather than just a movie star. De Rosnay gracefully builds in a metaphor comparing Pauline and Marilyn to the wild Mustangs that have dotted Pauline’s life. All of them are wilting under the realities of lives that they don’t have enough control over. All of them need to find a way to be free.
