At thirty-eight, Jessie Maddox subscribes to House Beautiful, Southern Living, even Psychology Today. She has a comfortable life in Glenville, Georgia, with Turner, the most reliable, responsible husband in the world. But after the storybook romance, “happily ever after” never came. Now the housewife who once wanted to be Martha Stewart before there was a Martha Stewart is left to wonder: Where did the marriage go wrong? Why can’t she stop picturing herself as the perfect grieving widow?
In 1939 New York, a young artist who also has been trained in the art of Houdini-esque escape, teams up with his cousin teams up with his cousin to create a great American literary product --- the comic book. As the shadow of Hitler falls over Europe and ultimately the world, the boys end up immersed in the Golden Age of Comic Books, finding greater fame and more trouble than they could ever have imagined.
