VERANDA's Sip & Read Book Club August Pick is "The Lions of Fifth Avenue"
Welcome to the VERANDA Sip & Read Book Club! Each month, we dive in to a book and offer exclusive conversations with the authors behind each tale over on Instagram, along with a perfectly matched cocktail. Our fourth pick is Fiona Davis's The Lions of Fifth Avenue, which follows the interwoven stories of rising feminist Laura Lyons and, years later, her librarian granddaughter on the cusp of solving a decades-in-the-making literary mystery. Get caught up on our past book club selections here.
It's the end of the Belle Epoch and the cusp of World War I, and Laura Lyons is a woman reflective of her era. She, too, is on the cusp—of love, tragedy, and an awakening of her own. Fiona Davis's The Lions of Fifth Avenue opens as Laura, her husband, and their two young children are settling into life in their new abode: the New York Public Library. Founded in 1895, the library is guarded by its two stalwart feline mascots, the now-famous Lions, which were sculpted by Edward Clark Potter and carved by the Piccirilli Brothers from pink Tennessee marble. Under their watchful gazes, a story of literary theft, familial tragedy and healing, and feminist awakening unfolds.
Despite her unique, grand home, everyday life as a mother with a husband lost in pursuit of his own literary stardom leaves Laura unfulfilled. Her discontent leads her to the newly launched Columbia Journalism School and the passionate drive to make a difference with her words. Though Laura's journey is years in the past, present-day women can relate as she grapples with motherhood and her household duties alongside late nights studying and the patriarchic doubts of her professor.
But Laura isn't deterred. "She'd prove to Professor Wakeman that a 'woman's story,' as he liked to call it, could impact history." Making her mark on history leads Laura into the feminist bohemia blossoming in 1913 Greenwich Village and a group of women who will open her eyes—and heart—to an entirely new worldview.
But when valuable books begin to go missing at the library, Laura's two worlds will collide with tragic consequences that will ripple for decades.
Interspersed between Laura's chapters is the related story of her granddaughter in 1993. Though separated by decades of time and a chasm of family secrets yet to be unearthed, Sadie Donovan has found her way to the very place her grandmother called home, as the lead curator for the library's important upcoming exhibit. Yet as Sadie begins to undertake the most exciting task of her career, tragedy strikes. For only the second time in the library's history, rare books tied to the exhibit begin to go missing.
To understand what's happening at the library, find the missing books, and clear her name from the list of suspects, Sadie must revisit the story of the Lyons family and their time living at the library whose reputation she's now fighting to save. As the interrelated stories unfold, "the secrets of generations of the Lyons family [unspool] like typewriter ribbon." We follow both women on their quests for justice—for the library that shelters them, the families they love, and their own desires fight for women's rightful places in history.
VERANDA SIP & READ BOOK CLUB FOR AUGUST 2020
Selection: The Lions of Fifth Avenue by Fiona Davis (available via local booksellers, Amazon, or Bookshop)
Start reading with us this August.
Send Fiona your questions! August 19 and 20 via VERANDA's Instagram Stories.
Tune in as Fiona answers your questions and chats about The Lions of Fifth Avenue on August 31.
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