Here’s a good get-rich-quick scheme from a few years ago: buy land in Colorado to grow hemp and turn it into CBD products. Here, also, is a good get-poor-quick scheme: see above. Finn Murphy, who seemingly has had more careers than you and I have fingers, left behind his past as a cashmere czar and a long-truck hauler (a stint that led to his marvelous best-seller, The Long Haul), to make his big score in hemp. Alas, like many booms in Colorado over the decades, this one went bust for Murphy and countless others. The difference for Murphy is that he has written a rollicking tale of his misadventure, complete with a cast of characters that would make Feydeau proud—if Feydeau wore a cowboy hat and had a French drawl. Let’s petition Netflix to make a series out of Rocky Mountain High so Murphy can finally turn a profit.
For nearly two years now, Sarah McNally, of McNally Jackson bookstore fame, has brought back to gorgeously produced life a collection of forgotten gems that make you wonder why they fell out of print in the first place. Ex-Wife was first published anonymously in 1929, when divorce was still a source of shame (at least for women) and when a freshly single divorcée could suddenly feel adrift and neglected. The story itself takes place in 1924 in a New York City pulsating with speakeasies and jazz clubs, an atmosphere that makes the heroine of our story only lonelier and less sure about love. Ursula Parrott herself had a topsy-turvy life, going from successful author (Ex-Wife was a best-seller) to a spendthrift whose reckless way with money eventually put her into a charity ward, where she died in 1957. Take one shot of Dorothy Parker and two shots of Dawn Powell, stir briskly, add a sour cherry, and you have the intoxicating Ex-Wife.
Asher Fogle Paul
Piece of Cake is the best antidote to a steamy August (or a frigid January, for that matter): a sweet (but not sugary) and funny look at the former debutante Claire Sommers, who loses her rich husband and her trust fund and now must work in Nashville as a staffer for a wedding magazine called, yes, Piece of Cake. Will it surprise you that the magazine is about to go extinct and that Sommers has a plan to save it but her boss insists on bringing on board a New York social-media star named Dominic Gravino to help with her project? The dialogue snaps, the sentiment is genuine, and if Julia Garner ever wants to break into comedic roles, here is her movie.
Rocky Mountain High, Ex-Wife, and Piece of Cake are available at your local independent bookstore, on Bookshop, and on Amazon
