White Collar Girl
Jordan Walsh has been hired on as a journalist for the Chicago Tribune, and she’s eager to make her mark and tackle the tough reporting that her father and brother did. Unfortunately she’s been relegated to the society pages, but she’s determined not to stay there. In the male- dominated world of journalism in the 1950s, Jordan knows she has to work twice as hard to get a story that will make her editor take notice. And she does just that, finding her own leads and putting herself in danger to get the goods on corruption in Mayor Daley’s office. Constantly thinking like a hard-nosed reporter, Jordan’s career eventually begins to wear on the relationship with her boyfriend, and she has to make some painful choices about what she wants and how she expects to get it.
Rosen has a gift for bringing difficult women to life, and Jordan Walsh is no exception. I wanted Jordan to succeed and cheered her on as she took on the men in her office and not only competed, but bested them, but I also was able to see her vulnerability and headstrong determination that could just as easily destroy everything good in her life. Still, sacrifices had to be made and some of Jordan’s problems were disasters of her own making. Rosen builds her story around real events and places Jordan in the midst of history, showing the strength, courage, and tenacity required for a woman to be taken seriously. I thoroughly enjoyed this novel and I especially loved the ending, because, like life, it shows that the bumps along the way give you the impetus to continue the story. Highly recommended.
