Do you remember the best summer of your life?
New York City, 1945. Marjorie Jacobson and her best friend, Marty Garrett, arrive fresh from the Kappa house at the University of Iowa hoping to find summer positions as shopgirls. Turned away from the top department stores, they miraculously find jobs as pages at Tiffany & Co., becoming the first women to ever work on the sales floor—a diamond-filled day job replete with Tiffany blue shirtwaist dresses from Bonwit Teller’s—and the envy of all their friends.
Hart takes us back to the magical time when she and Marty rubbed elbows with the rich and famous; pinched pennies to eat at the Automat; experienced nightlife at La Martinique; and danced away their weekends with dashing midshipmen. Between being dazzled by Judy Garland’s honeymoon visit to Tiffany, celebrating VJ Day in Times Square, and mingling with Café Society, she fell in love, learned unforgettable lessons, made important decisions that would change her future, and created the remarkable memories she now shares with all of us.
New York City, 1945. Marjorie Jacobson and her best friend, Marty Garrett, arrive fresh from the Kappa house at the University of Iowa hoping to find summer positions as shopgirls. Turned away from the top department stores, they miraculously find jobs as pages at Tiffany & Co., becoming the first women to ever work on the sales floor—a diamond-filled day job replete with Tiffany blue shirtwaist dresses from Bonwit Teller’s—and the envy of all their friends.
Praise for Summer at Tiffany:
“Every once in a while a book comes along that is everything one wants it to be; such is the case with Summer at Tiffany. Hart’s infectious telling of her wide-eyed introduction to New York City during the summer of 1945 is charming and fun…a rare behind-the-scenes peek at the iconic store, where Marlene Dietrich, newlyweds Judy Garland and Vincente Minnelli, a steady stream of the 400, and ‘Old Man Tiffany’ himself come through the doors…reminiscent of Rona Jaffe’s The Best of Everything and Truman Capote’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s.”
— BookPage
“Call this honey-dipped memoir the distaff side of the Greatest Generation…Hart has a genuine gift for conveying the texture of mid-century Manhattan. The reader experiences the city’s pre-air-conditioning summer swelter, the clothes, the social mores, the theaters and the people Hart encounters at Tiffany, everyone from its Irish shipping clerks to its high-society clientele. The biggest surprise of the memoir is Hart’s ability to make the dilemmas of her own young life both compelling and contemporary…Neither sentimental nor saccharine, this book offers insights into the women who lived through World War II. It’s a perfect Mother’s Day gift.”
— USA Today
“Summer at Tiffany should be read for two reasons: partly because it’s just plain readable fun, and partly because it’s a quaint curio-cabinet piece, a book so much in the style of those mid-century career girl–on–the–town frolics that filled young women’s bookshelves in the late 1940s, 1950s, and early 1960s that you’ll need to glance up from the page periodically to reassure yourself that you’re still in 2007…That’s what you get here, curiously untouched by the passage of time, and all wrapped up in a Tiffany blue package with a bow on top. The company should put this book on prominent display in its stores, for heaven’s sake—it’s that much of a paean to the Tiffany glory days…Her memoir makes for light-as-souffle reading, no doubt; but it nonetheless delights in its sheer joie de vivre about this one amazing summer, even 60-odd years later. You go, girls.”
— Buffalo News
“Remarkably, this winsome memoir was written 60 years after that giddy summer spent pinching pennies and dreaming of diamonds, yet Hart’s infectious vivacity resonates with a madcap immediacy, delectably capturing the city’s heady vibrancy and a young girl’s guileless enchantment.”
— Booklist
“In this glorious once upon a time fairytale come true, two beautiful college debs from Iowa make it to New York City, end up working at Tiffany’s and living the dream of every career girl of the 1940’s Marjorie Hart’s charming and delicious account of her most memorable summer captures a time when women had moxie, wore proper hats and gloves and burned with ambition to make it in the big city. I loved every moment!”
— Adriana Trigiani, New York Times bestselling author of The Good Left Undone and Lucia, Lucia
“A charming story of a charmed summer in an era gone by. I didn’t want Marjorie Hart’s effervescent memoir to end.”
— Emily Giffin, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Something Borrowed and The Lies That Bind
“This old alum (and I do mean old!) really enjoyed Summer at Tiffany. Although Walter Hoving hired me as of April Fools Day in 1956, I lived in New York during much of the war. In reading Summer at Tiffany, precious memories swept over me, joyfully! I’m looking down as I type this at my Schlumberger wedding ring. Thank you for writing this delightful memoir.”
— Letitia Baldrige
“The It List: It was the color of the Tiffany blue book jacket that called to us when we recently came upon the book Summer at Tiffany. But the content and charm of the story inside won us over completely…Hart writes about that stylish summer with verve, recollecting with a touching purity a magical summer in Manhattan, seen through the eyes of two 21-year-olds, just as the end of World War II approached.”
— Cleveland Plain Dealer
“The 82-year-old author’s memories have been polished smooth over the course of six decades, and her warm account of more innocent times makes an unspoken comparison with the way we live now. A fond backward glance.”
— Kirkus
Marjorie Hart’s New York Times best-selling memoir, Summer at Tiffany, concludes as Marjorie and University of Iowa roommate Marty prepare to return home to Iowa from their adventurous summer of 1945 in New York City.
Story City Stories opens with their departure on a train and the difficult decisions Marjorie faces ahead. Through vivid storytelling and first hand experiences, Marjorie looks back on her childhood in the humble, yet dynamic town of Story City, Iowa in the 1920s and 30s. Organized in four seasons, Story City comes to life with characters molded by rich family relationships, Norwegian culture and values, historical events and opportunities that extend both reader and Marjorie beyond the town’s beloved Main Street.