In a New York City jazz bar on the last night of 1937, watching a quartet because she couldn't afford to see the whole ensemble, there were certain things Katey Kontent knew:
· how to sneak into the cinema, and steal silk stockings from Bendel's
· how to type eighty words a minute, five thousand an hour, and nine million a year
· that if you can still lose yourself in a Dickens novel then everything is going to be fine

By the end of the year she'll have learned:
· how to live like a redhead and insist upon the very best
· that chance encounters can be fated, and the word 'yes' can be a poison
· that riches can turn to rags in the trip of a heartbeat.