After leaving home, Essie meets the wealthy Miss Dorcas Vashon, who offers to turn her into a lady to help her “rise in life.” Under Miss Vashon’s draconian tutelage in etiquette, deportment, and the rules of polite society, Essie is transformed into a young socialite - one newly arrived in Washington, DC, with a different name and invented background. Essie finds refuge in the company of an older woman, Ma Clara, who takes a maternal interest in the girl and encourages her aspirations. Fourteen-year-old Essie longs to escape her miserable life in Savannah, Georgia, where her mother earns her living as a prostitute. Set during the post-Reconstruction era, this novel offers an intriguing view of nineteenth-century African American upper-echelon society.
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