Park Avenue Summer

The novel opens in 2012 as an elderly Alice Weiss reads the obituary of Helen Gurley Brown in the New York Times. Studying an accompanying photograph from 1965, Alice recognizes a sliver of herself, partly cropped from the frame, standing beside Helen in her office. The image sends her back forty-seven years, to the summer that changed her life.

In 1965, twenty-one-year-old Alice arrives in New York City from Youngstown, Ohio, with $375 in savings and a dream of becoming a photographer. She has left behind a broken engagement to Michael Segal and a strained relationship with her father, Herb, whose remarriage to a woman named Faye has created distance between them. Alice's deepest motivation is her late mother, Vivian, who died in a car accident when Alice was thirteen, ending a planned family move to Manhattan. Alice carries Vivian's Leica camera and a photo album documenting her childhood as her most prized possessions.

After several failed interviews, Alice contacts Elaine Sloan, a book editor at Bernard Geis Associates and Vivian's closest friend from their days as roommates at the Barbizon Hotel. Elaine arranges an interview with Helen Gurley Brown, the newly appointed editor in chief of Cosmopolitan, a controversial hire because Helen has no magazine experience; her only credential is the scandalous bestseller Sex and the Single Girl. Alice arrives at the run-down offices to find Helen crying on the phone to her husband, David Brown, a Hollywood producer, as staff members resign rather than work for her. Helen initially dismisses Alice for lacking qualifications, but Alice quotes Helen's own book back to her, and Helen, charmed and desperate, offers her the job.

Alice settles into a tiny apartment above a butcher shop, befriending her neighbor Trudy Lewis, a shoe saleswoman at Bergdorf Goodman. During a tour of New York's landmarks, Trudy reveals an encyclopedic knowledge of architecture, and Alice urges her to pursue it as a career. At Caffe Dell'Artista, a Greenwich Village café where patrons leave notes in desk drawers, Alice writes a declaration pledging they will both follow their dreams. Trudy signs reluctantly, and Alice tucks the napkin into a drawer.

At work, Helen faces hostility on every front. The staff dismiss her ideas, and Richard Berlin, president of the Hearst Corporation, confronts her about declining revenue. Helen's vision is radical: She wants Cosmopolitan to speak directly to young, single women about sex, relationships, ambition, and self-improvement. At a staff meeting, she shocks the room by insisting the magazine address topics like masturbation and orgasms. Hearst slashes her budget to $30,000 per issue, a sum designed to ensure her failure.

Erik Masterson, a young Hearst executive, takes Alice to dinner and reveals that the board intended to let Cosmopolitan die quietly. He asks Alice to spy on Helen. Alice refuses. Elaine advises her to say nothing, explaining that Alice holds more power because Erik cannot expose his own misconduct. Erik later apologizes, and a flirtatious relationship develops. Helen warns Alice that Erik is a "Don Juan." Alice eventually enters a casual affair with Erik, experiencing a physical awakening but keeping the relationship secret.

Meanwhile, Alice meets Christopher Mack, a young freelance photographer connected to Elaine. Christopher invites Alice to assist on photo shoots and teaches her about composition and light. His live-in girlfriend, Daphne, a model, relieves Alice of romantic pressure and lets her focus on learning. When Alice privately shows Helen her own photography portfolio, hoping to shoot for the magazine, Helen tells her she is more valuable as a secretary. Humiliated, Alice throws the portfolio in the wastebasket, but Helen quietly retrieves it and returns it without comment.

Helen fights to fill the July issue on her tight budget. She holds open auditions and recruits unknown freelance writers, including Nora Ephron and Judith Krantz. She rewrites articles herself and organizes an advertising luncheon at the 21 Club, winning accounts from Philip Morris, Helena Rubinstein, and Cover Girl. She selects a provocative cover image of the model Renata in a backwards gingham top exposing deep cleavage. When the cover is leaked to Berlin, he demands she change it. Helen issues an ultimatum: If the July issue does not outsell June, she will resign. Berlin accepts.

Throughout these months, confidential information keeps reaching Hearst and the press. Helen's memo asking female staff to describe how they would like men to handle their bosoms during lovemaking is leaked to Women's Wear Daily, causing a scandal. Helen posts a warning about a "viper" in the staff. The truth emerges when Alice spots Bridget Grayson, one of the office secretaries, leaving Erik's apartment building. Bridget confesses that Erik recruited her to leak intelligence in exchange for promises of a promotion. Both are fired.

The July issue hits newsstands and sells more than 200,000 copies over June. Helen gathers the staff for a champagne toast, but during the celebration, Alice receives a call from Faye: Her father has had a heart attack and died.

At the funeral in Youngstown, Faye reveals family secrets. She and Herb were high school sweethearts; he ended their relationship after meeting Vivian and learning she was pregnant. Alice's parents married because of the pregnancy. Faye also reveals that Alice's maternal grandparents, a judge named Morris and his wife Ruth in Stamford, Connecticut, did not die before Alice was born as she had been told; they disowned Vivian and are presumably still alive. On her way back to New York, Alice impulsively visits Stamford. Ruth recognizes her because of her resemblance to Vivian. The judge, now living with dementia, mistakes Alice for his daughter and delivers a broken apology. Alice leaves knowing she has aunts, cousins, and family she never knew existed.

Back at Cosmopolitan, the renowned photographer Francesco Scavullo offers Alice a position as his assistant at nearly double her salary. Alice agonizes, feeling she cannot abandon Helen. Erik reappears and proposes marriage, offering a penthouse and telling Alice she can give up photography. Alice turns him down, telling him she does not love him.

Alice's feelings for Christopher have grown since his breakup with Daphne, deepening during a day together at Coney Island and a charged exchange at a Writers Guild dinner. She goes to his studio and kisses him, only to discover that Daphne is there; they have reconciled. Alice flees to Caffe Dell'Artista, where she finds the declaration she and Trudy wrote months earlier. Sitting with her mother's camera, she calls Scavullo and accepts the job. When she tells Helen she is leaving, Helen smiles and reveals she was the one who told Scavullo to hire Alice.

The epilogue returns to 2012 on the evening of Alice's solo photography exhibit. She worked with Scavullo for ten years before building her own career. She is married to Christopher, who worked through his fear of being loved after Daphne left him for good. Their children and grandchildren attend the opening, along with Elaine and Trudy, who pursued architecture as Alice once urged. Surveying the gallery, Alice thinks of the women who shaped her: her mother, Elaine, Trudy, and Helen, whom she credits as the four corners that kept her grounded and allowed her to grow.