Fiona Davis's seventh historical novel, The Spectacular, follows one young woman's career as a Rockette while a mysterious pipe bomber terrorizes New York City. At age 19, dance teacher Marion Brooks knows she's expected to marry her high school sweetheart and settle down in the suburbs. Instead, Marion auditions to dance in the Rockettes' Christmas Spectacular and finds herself living in a boardinghouse in Manhattan, tasting an entirely new life. Marion loves being a Rockette, though the rehearsal schedule is grueling, and her widowed father refuses to see her while she keeps dancing. Meanwhile, a terrorist nicknamed the Big Apple Bomber, who has been attacking public places in the city for 16 years, steps up his campaign--even targeting Radio City Music Hall during one of Marion's performances. Incensed, Marion enlists the help of a young psychologist to track down the bomber using new methods of profiling.
Davis (The Magnolia Palace; The Chelsea Girls; The Masterpiece) explores Marion's fight for independence and her complex relationship with her family, alongside her hunt for the bomber and the shifting social expectations for women in the mid-20th century. Davis adds vivid behind-the-scenes details about Radio City and the Rockettes' show, bringing readers into their rehearsals and dressing rooms. As Marion pursues both the bomber and her dreams of a bigger life, she also grapples with new information about her mother, who harbored performing dreams and died when Marion was a child. Weaving together love, revenge, ambition, and heartbreak, Davis brings her two story lines to satisfying--and surprising--conclusions. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams