Chloe
Chloe is the first of a four-book series spanning four generations of women in the same Maryland family. The reader meets wealthy young Chloe Kimball in 1917 as she works on her manipulative father’s political campaign. Her elopement to New York with a soldier frees her from her parents’ unhappy household, but Chloe soon finds herself on her own. Chloe and her friend (and former servant) Minnie rise to fame as Fifth Avenue models, and both become involved with the NAACP, but Chloe’s short-lived independence ends disappointingly when she finds that her brief marriage has left her pregnant. A reader might predict that the responsibility of caring for a child could restrain Chloe’s options, but Chloe’s loss of independence is for sadder reasons: Chloe allows her mother to raise the child in Maryland, and she returns to playing her father’s hostess in Washington, DC. The plot jerks a little too quickly through to the Depression and further courtship. A subplot with a young orphan boy is particularly detrimental to anyone who wants to root for Chloe: it makes her appear jealous, unreasonable, and whiny. By the time Chloe found some independence and love again, I found I no longer cared.
