The Mantra of a Vagabond (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780692691717)

The Great Depression brought the roaring twenties to an abrupt halt, destroying banks, careers, and livelihoods. But even as her family's wealth and prestige crumbled around her, seventeen-year-old Elvie Jones's life finally began.

The daughter of an arrogant New York banker and an elegant, overprotective Mississippi mama, Elvie inherited her parents' fiery nature-and none of their grace and poise. Elvie is crude, loud-mouthed, and desperate to break free from her mother's overprotective grasp.

A chance meeting with a poor boy on Wall Street soon triggers Elvie's long-suppressed need for freedom. Determined to meet him again, Elvie ventures out in the crisp cold of an autumn New York night and loses herself in the dark streets.

There she'll forge an unlikely friendship with a Sicilian gangster that leads her to old copies of a gossip newspaper revealing a dark secret in her family's past-even as a tragedy strikes in the present. Both events hurt her deeply, but then again, no life begins without some pain.

A tale of self-discovery and coming of age in a tumultuous time, The Mantra of a Vagabond brings 1929 New York and Elvie Jones to life in all their flawed, rough-and-tumble glory.