Love in the Time of Taffeta

At age 30, Iley Gilbert is thoroughly sick of trying to make it in the photo biz, and disenchanted after putting in stints at a Boston-area newspaper, a photography gallery, and even a pathetic frame shop. When she abruptly quits the frame shop, she's ready to give up for good, until she spots a compelling ad in the paper. A photographer who shoots high school prom photos is looking for an assistant. Not only that, he's willing to pay top dollar to someone who would give up Friday and Saturday nights to help take pre-prom pictures of high-school kids dressed in their finery and candid shots during the dance. William Jasper, Prom Photographer, is not the brand of aging, greasy wedding photographer she was expecting. Rather, he's 35, strikingly handsome, and sharp-witted. Iley is instantly attracted to him and gets the sense the feeling is mutual. But William isn't everything he's made himself out to be-that is, he's not single. He's got a permanently out-of-town wife-he doesn't need a girlfriend. But Iley has lost her way, and she'll need her friends and her photos and a lot of bad proms before she can find her way back on track, away from the sleezeball, and into a life that's a little more picture-perfect.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Fiction, Romance. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.