A Dangerous Dress — Julia Holden

There are dresses, and then there are dangerous dresses....

Everyone knows dresses can be powerful things. For example, Cinderella's fairy godmother gave her a beautiful dress, which empowered her to go to the ball . . . etc. My grandmother's dress is powerful, and with all due respect to Cinderella, it must have given my nineteen-year-old grandmother powers that would make a fairy godmother blush. Obviously, it gave her the power to show her skin and to make men swoon. But I think it also gave her the power to think for herself To vote. To drink. To shop... To make her own choices--and her own mistakes. And last but not least, the power to have great love affairs. I don't know if my grandmother did all those things, and frankly, it's a little strange to think about her that way. . . . But the fact that she had this amazing, adult, dangerous dress I never knew about makes me hope that once upon a time, she lived an amazing, adult, dangerous life. . . .

If there's one dress that could make Jane Stuart think that anything is possible, it's her late grandmother's vintage 1920s Parisian dress. And when the dress becomes her ticket out of Kirland, Indiana, Jane takes her first tentative steps on her own reckless, passionate, and oh so dangerous adventure....