In a New York City jazz bar on the last night of 1937, watching a quartet because she couldn't afford to see the whole ensemble, there were certain things Katey Kontent knew: * how to sneak into the cinema, and steal silk stockings from Bendel's * how to type eighty words a minute, five thousand an hour, and nine million a year * that if you can still lose yourself in a Dickens novel then everything is going to be fine
By the end of the year she'll have learned: * how to live like a redhead and insist upon the very best * that chance encounters can be fated, and the word 'yes' can be a poison * that riches can turn to rags in the trip of a heartbeat . . .