"Darling Rose Gold"

Stephanie Wrobel grew up in Chicago but has been living in the UK for the last three years with her husband and Cockapoo, Moose Barkwinkle. She has an MFA from Emerson College and has had short fiction published in Bellevue Literary Review. Before turning to fiction, she worked as a creative copywriter at various advertising agencies.

Wrobel applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, Darling Rose Gold, and reported the following:

From page 69:

I like to think my time in prison was made easier not because of my size, but my charisma. The key—inside prison and out—is befriending the people in power. Once I had the guards and warden in my pocket, the inmates fell in line too. They began to see me as more than an obnoxiously jolly doppelganger of the Kool-Aid man. I became useful.

This passage from page 69 is representative of Darling Rose Gold as a whole because of its observations about power. In a sense, the entire book is one big power struggle between mother and daughter. Smaller struggles play out as well, between Patty and her neighbors, Patty and the justice system, Rose Gold and her friend Alex, Rose Gold and her neighbor Mrs. Stone. The list goes on and on. Patty starts at an advantage against her daughter because she knows how to play the game, how to manipulate people to get what she wants. When the reader first meets Rose Gold, she has no idea—but she’s a quick learner.

Visit Stephanie Wrobel's website.

--Marshal Zeringue