Ilona Joy Saari

It's 1968. While writing a lifestyle story on Schrafft’s restaurants in Manhattan, Ashley, a young reporter, meets Vi Wilding and three other much older women who have dined alone at Schrafft’s for decades. Slowly, the women share their shocking secret as they spin tales of love and betrayal, culminating in the murder of a fifth woman in 1938. This triggers the women to band together and exact their revenge after each had been conned out of a fortune. In the course of her interviews, Ashley struggles to grow from a lifestyle reporter to a feature reporter. Shifting from 1968 to the turn of the century and into the 30’s, this novel is a compelling revelation of women who struggled to find their place in a world where respect and a chance for employment and independence were not freely offered to them.