Summary
In a moon-drenched New Haven courtyard, shimmy sorceress Marcia Meadows—flapper incarnate—slips past the Gothic stone like a jazz note through stained glass, barging into Horace Tarbox’s lamp-lit cloister of Latin verbs and first editions. One glitter-bomb of laughter detonates the boy’s cloistral certainty; he tails her to Manhattan’s sodium glare, weds her in a dawn-hour city-hall fever, and is promptly excommunicated by the paternal purse. While Marcia’s limbs spell out syncopated alphabets on midnight stages, Horace’s fountain-penned epics return hemorrhaging rejection slips; he ricochets from copy-desk to speakeasy till a backstage Romeo’s brass knuckles recalibrate his jaw. The beating flips the axis of his ambition: sinew supersedes syntax, trapeze replaces typewriter. Soon he’s chalk-handed, soaring above orchestra pits, a human comet in spangles. Meanwhile Marcia, heavy with child, amuses herself by lexicographing the vulgate of chorus lines and bootleggers; her slang dictionary—part crib-sheet, part Rosetta Stone—vaults onto best-seller lists, turning her into a household noun. The Tarbox dynasty, scenting profit in the air, extends its gilded olive branch; the prodigal aerialist, now blood-beaten but unbroken, pirouettes back into filial grace under the forgiving marquee lights.
Synopsis
When, on a prank, shimmy dancer Marcia Meadows visits bookworm Horace Tarbox in his Yale dormitory, Horace falls madly in love and follows her to New York, where they marry. Denounced by his wealthy father, Horace attempts to support Marcia through his writing, but all his manuscripts are rejected, and he is fired from every job. Marcia continues her dancing, and one night, Horace is soundly thrashed while trying to protect her from a fervent admirer. The incident forces Horace to take up athletics, and he is offered a job as a vaudeville trapeze artist. Marcia has a baby and for amusement writes a dictionary of slang. The book is published, Marcia becomes famous, and Horace's father forgives his son.
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