Book Title: Tomboy: A Jane Benjamin Novelby Shelley Blanton-Stroud
Category: AdultFiction (18+), 308 pages
Genre: Historical Thriller
Publisher: She Writes Press
Release dates: June 2022
Content Rating:PG-13 + M. The F word appears exactly once in the book. There is a
completely non-explicit sex scene. There is a suicide.
Book Description:
It’s 1939. Jane Benjamon’s got five days at sea to solve the murder of a
Wimbledon champion’s coach and submit a gossip column that tells the truth.
If not the facts.
On the brink of World War II, Jane wants to
have it all. By day she hustles as a scruffy, tomboy cub reporter. By night
she secretly struggles to raise her toddler sister, Elsie, and protect her
from their mother.
But Jane’s got a plan: she’ll become the San
Francisco Prospect’s first gossip columnist and make enough money to care
for Elsie.
Jane finagles her way to the women’s championship at
Wimbledon, starring her hometown’s tennis phenom and cover girl Tommie
O’Rourke. Jane plans to write her first column there. But then she witnesses
Edith “Coach” Carlson, Tommie’s closest companion, drop dead in the stands
of apparent heart attack, and her plan is blown.
Sailing home on
the RMS Queen Mary, Jane veers between competing instincts: Should she write
a social bombshell column, personally damaging her new friend Tommie’s
persona and career? Or should she work to uncover the truth of Coach’s death
and its connection to a larger conspiracy involving US participation in the
coming war?
Putting away her menswear and donning first-class
ballgowns, Jane discovers what upper-class status hides, protects, and
destroys. Ultimately—like nations around the globe in 1939—she must choose
what she’ll give up in order to do what’s right.
When I wrote Copy Boy, book one in the Jane Benjamin
trilogy, I knew all three books would deal with Jane struggling against
conformity. She wants to do something really significant, be something big in
the world, but she finds it difficult to accomplish in the real world of 1937.
In the first book, she puts on a man’s clothes and finds that she
can get the job she wants and act as assertive as she wants, much more so than
when she dresses as a conventional girl.
That’s what Jane’s cross dressing was to me, as the author, in
the beginning. The discovery that it is easier for men than women to achieve in
the ordinary world.
But after Copy Boy, many readers came to me with questions
about Jane’s sexuality, about her gender. They often asked, Is she gender
fluid?
Honestly, I didn’t know. I only knew that Jane experienced power
and comfort in wearing pants that she’d never experienced in dresses (largely
because the dresses lacked pockets, which Jane LOVES).
In Tomboy, I’ve begun to look at that question more
directly, asking nineteen year old Jane if she wishes she were a man rather
than a woman. Or if she is attracted to women more than she is to men. She
meets other characters in Tomboy who make that question more concrete.
I’m not saying Jane’s got it all worked out in Tomboy, but
that she is beginning to see she can be comfortable and assertive in dresses
too (so long as there are pockets and no hosiery) and that she may find both
men and women attractive.
What Jane really wants is to be free to be herself, not to be
forced into anyone else’s box. We’ll see as the trilogy continues with Flyboy
how that desire for freedom works for her.
So, if this fits with the definition of gender fluid, I suppose
that’s what Jane is.
Guest Post
Meet the Narrator:
April Doty is a classically trained actress with a BFA from Syracuse
University. She is a voice actor and the narrator of 26 books. Born in
Virginia, educated in New York, seasoned in London and settled in Spain,
April Doty brings the sound of a rich and varied life experience to her
narration. The character of Jane came to life in her home studio on the
Costa del Sol.
Shelley grew up in California’s Central Valley, the daughter
of Dust Bowl immigrants who made good on their ambition to get out of the
field. She recently retired from teaching writing at Sacramento State
University and still consults with writers in the energy industry. She
co-directs Stories on Stage Sacramento, where actors perform the stories
of established and emerging authors, and serves on the advisory board of
916 Ink, an arts-based creative writing nonprofit for children, as well as
on the board of the Gould Center for Humanistic Studies at Claremont
McKenna College. Copy Boy is her first Jane Benjamin Novel. Tomboy is her
second. The third, Working Girl, will come out in November 2023. Her
writing has been a finalist in the Sarton Book Awards, IBPA Benjamin
Franklin Awards, Killer Nashville’s Silver Falchion Award, the American
Fiction Awards, and the National Indie Excellence Awards. She and her
husband live in Sacramento with many photos of their out-of-town sons and
their wonderful partners.
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4 Comments
Sounds like a great read.
ReplyDeleteLooks great
ReplyDeleteSounds really good
ReplyDeleteThis sounds really good!
ReplyDeletePlease try not to spam posts with the same comments over and over again. Authors like seeing thoughtful comments about their books, not the same old, "I like the cover" or "sounds good" comments. While that is nice, putting some real thought and effort in is appreciated. Thank you.