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| Headline 28 January 2025 Thanks to the publisher for the invitation to read this book |
As the Great Depression bites, show dancer Grace's Irish immigrant family can't afford the rising rents, nor the medicine that her little sister urgently needs. When her twin brother is injured and can no longer work on the construction of the half-built Empire State Building, Grace steps up - literally. She trades her dancing shoes for worker boots, braving deadly metal work hundreds of feet in the sky.
But survival isn't guaranteed. Failure could mean not only losing her job, but also her life, and the livelihood of her family and team. Sparks fly across the great metal beams, as a terrible accident and a split-second decision leaves Grace re-evaluating everything that she thought she knew about herself.
📖 My Review..
It’s not often I experience vertigo when reading a book but from the nerve wracking opening chapter of this fascinating novel my heart was quite literally in my mouth as I observed Grace O’Connell take those first few steps out onto the shell of the Empire State Building in 1930s New York.
When her twin brother Patrick is injured at work and with her family’s, already precarious, financial state affected by the deep depression, Grace takes her brother’s place in a four man team of riveters employed to work on the outer shell of the Empire State Building. This is no place for a woman but with her identity hidden, and masquerading as her brother, Grace grows in skill and confidence but is always aware that being hundreds of feet above street level, with nothing but steel and air below her, definitely brings its own dangerous challenges.
The author has captured to perfection the sheer scale of the danger faced by all those who once worked on this iconic building. The constant fear of falling, the heat of the metal, the unpredictability of the weather and the absolute terror that Grace would be discovered meant that I raced through the book in a couple of sittings. I was eager to learn more about this intrepid young woman whose love for dancing gives Grace the strength and poise she needed to keep her balance on the steel beams. The city of New York, deep in depression, came alive, the hustle for jobs, the unscrupulous landlords who took but never gave back, the overwhelming power of friendship and the deep abiding loyalty of all those who tried to protect Grace’s secret.
Grace of the Empire State is so impeccably researched it brought history alive in a really authentic way and so knowing absolutely nothing about the construction of the Empire State Building I was inspired to look at the archive photographs of Lewis Hines, the official photographer, and marvelled at the bravery of the ‘sky boys’ those structural workers who risked their lives as they put the gigantic steel frame together.,
It’s definitely going to be one of my reads of the year and for that reason I am delighted to make Grace of the Empire State my Book of the Month for February.
About the Author
Gemma Tizzard has a degree in American Studies, with a particular interest in twentieth century American history and untold women’s stories. From Berkshire, she now lives in Southampton, where she works as a marketing manager. She also writes romantic comedies and was longlisted for the 2021 and 2022 Comedy Women in Print (CWIP) Unpublished Novel Prize. Grace of the Empire State is her first historical novel.
Keep up with Gemma Tizzard on Instagram @gemma_tizzard.
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