A Roaring Twenties Mystery in the Motor City
Ruta Sepetys’ debut adult novel features nefarious automobile barons, jewel thieves, and suspicious goings-on at an artist residency
The year is 1927, the city Detroit, and Marjorie Lennox, youngest daughter of a dirty-dealing automobile family, has been invited to an artist residency, where she’ll supposedly have time, space, and like-minded company to do her work as a fashion designer. Thus begins A Fortune of Sand, the debut adult novel by Ruta Sepetys, whose popular books for young adult readers include I Must Betray You and Between Shades of Gray.
Feigning excitement for their sister as she seizes an opportunity to ply her artistic trade at a retreat funded by the dashing and mysterious Charles Bonafante, two of Marjorie’s siblings, Charlotte and Graham, agree to tell Marjorie’s stern, hard-drinking tycoon of a father — who doesn’t believe women should be in the arts — that Marjorie is spending time at the family cottage. Suspicious from the start, Marjorie’s siblings seem increasingly untrustworthy as the story unfolds, much like their father, who is up to no good on too many fronts to enumerate.
As her family members scheme for money and power at home, Marjorie finds life at the residency equal parts fulfilling and strange in a manner that borders on sinister. The residents, all women, are forced to lock themselves inside their rooms at night, and whispers circulate about women vanishing in the past. When Marjorie and her pals break curfew to attend a rousing, Gatsby-like party at Marjorie’s oldest sister’s new home, multiple mysteries begin to unravel in dangerous ways.
It’s entertaining to turn the pages in this swiftly paced story and witness the multiple threads of suspense and intrigue Sepetys creates. Short chapters and short letters from a mysterious author deliver a brisk, playful reading experience. Family secrets are unearthed and nefarious plans unfold in a whodunit spectacle of “glamour, grift, and greed.” Lending a layer of gravity to the fun, finger-pointing proceedings is the story of what women must do to survive — and how they sometimes don’t survive — in families, industries, and institutions dominated by decidedly anti-feminist forces.
Though this novel is her foray into storytelling for an adult audience, Sepetys — a Detroit native — leans into her experience with historical fiction here. She mines 10 years’ worth of research on real-life events, including a jewel heist in 1925 at the Detroit Institute of Arts and some questionable practices at Eloise Hospital, to give her fictional characters an authentic backdrop, interesting backstories, and friends readers will recognize. The Lennox family rubs elbows with Henry Ford and Charlie Chaplin.
The large cast of characters sometimes run short on depth, but the book will satisfy readers looking to get lost in a period mystery full of sparkle, drama, a dash of romance, and one woman’s quest to fight patriarchal forces in defense of her artistic freedom. Marjorie’s questions for the city she loves serve as questions to her authentic self, questions at the heart of the book’s highest concerns: “And what is the fate of Detroit? Who gets to make the rules and who gets to break them? Will her inventive, luminous city rise and regain the best possible version of itself or forever be shackled to the guiles and fortunes of the auto industry?”
Amy Lyons writes fiction and nonfiction. Her essays and short stories have appeared in Autofocus, Prime Number, Waxwing, Lunch Ticket, and several anthologies. Her reviews of theater and books have appeared in Washington City Paper, LA Weekly, and Backstage. She holds an M.F.A. from Bennington and is an alum of Vermont Studio Center, Millay Colony for the Arts, and Tin House.
