Hardly A Lady

Hardly A Lady by Frances Strickler​​
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Starting in the year 2010, a 94-year-old lady leads us back to her years as a young girl—and to her spicy and sensual life—through perusing her journals. She starts with the wedding of her grandson who is the gateway to her memories of fine clothes, fancy parties, and a glamorous past.
 
It is the year 1930. Josie Kassemier is a 14-year-old northern Kentucky farm girl. She has won praise and 4-H awards for her favorite activity—sewing. She dreams of designing and creating unique fashions to become a designer for the stars.
 
The 1930s was the era of bootleggers and gamblers as Prohibition was ending. Organized crime was converging in Newport, Kentucky, and it was becoming a center for dueling mob families.
 
In an almost accidental encounter, Josie meets a man who keeps the books for one of the restaurants/casinos/whorehouses that proliferate the area. She, who wants to sew for the stars, finds herself instead involved with the mob.
 
Josie comes under the protection of one of the longest-term and last remaining Madams in the area. Under her guidance and tutelage, Josie learns what it means to be a successful businesswoman when women could not have their bank accounts or businesses without the support and name of a husband or father.
 
From 1930–1940, we follow Josie as she looks back on her journals and chronicles the journey from a young, naïve 14-year-old to her 24-year-old self.
 
The book ends with a somewhat surprising, but not wholly unexpected conclusion, in which she follows her dreams.