"The Chelsea Girls"

Fiona Davis began her career in New York City as an actress, where she worked on Broadway, off-Broadway, and in regional theater. After getting a master's degree at Columbia Journalism School, she fell in love with writing, leapfrogging from editor to freelance journalist before finally settling down as an author of historical fiction. She's a graduate of the College of William & Mary and is based in New York City.

Davis applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, The Chelsea Girls, and reported the following:

Boy did this test ring true. In the book, actress Hazel Ripley has been working on a play about her experiences during WWII as a USO tour performer, but is having trouble. She can’t seem to make it work, and her overbearing mother doesn’t help things any. They get into a big fight, and Hazel seeks refuge in the Chelsea Hotel, known for being a hotbed of political and artistic intrigue. There, she’s finally inspired, and thinks about what the Chelsea Hotel means to her:

This place was a living, breathing muse, one that coddled its guests and kept them warm while they scribbled away. Or, from the sound of the piano she’d heard in the hallway and the artwork in the lobby, composed or sang or painted. … For now, though, in the quiet of her room, she would take it page by page.

Visit Fiona Davis's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Address.

My Book, The Movie: The Masterpiece.

My Book, The Movie: The Chelsea Girls.

--Marshal Zeringue