I appreciate that Ms. van alkemade read an interesting story and then decided to fictionalize it but I found her writing uninspired. This happened, then that happened. Although I will admit I wanted to know what was going to happen. ( )

I listened to this book. The premise sounded good but the book never fulfilled its potential (OMG, that sound so much like the comments teachers used to write on my report cards!).

The main story takes place in New York City starting in 1918 and continues into the Roaring Twenties. Helen was an actress but is recovering from a lengthy illness and wonders what she can do until she is well enough to return to acting. Her father died when she was quite young and so her mother, younger brother and she are barely subsisting. Her father's old friend, Jacob Ruppert, present when her father slammed into a tree on his motorcycle, is a rich man, owner of a brewery and the Yankees baseball team. He paid for her hospital stay and the private nurse she needed and now he invites her, her mother and her little brother to see the Yankees play. He learns that Helen needs a job and he buys the theatre she used to act in and hires her to manage it. He asks his personal secretary, Albert, to liase with Helen. Helen and Albert develop a deep friendship and Helen thinks it could become more but the reader knows from Albert's turn as narrator that he is gay. (He actually calls himself a pansy.) As the years pass Helen becomes close to Colonel Ruppert as well and, as we know from the start of the book, she is one of the major inheritors in his will.

Apparently this book is based on real events as there really was a mysterious bequest in Jacob Ruppert's will to an actress named Helen. I'm just not sure this treatment was the right one for that bit of history. ( )

This book turned out to be nothing at all what I was expecting. Yes, it is historical fiction and set in New York City from 1923 to 1939. Yes, it is about the original owner of the New York Yankees - Colonel Jacob Ruppert; and yes it about the building of Yankee stadium, the signing of Babe Ruth, and the Yankees run for the pennant in those early years. But what I wasn't expecting, and what turned out to be the whole story behind this book is the LGBTQ lifestyle in the 20's and 30's in New York City. Albert Kramer leads a secret life outside of the world of Jacob Ruppert to whom he is employed as secretary. Helen Winthrope, a young actress who lives alone with her mother, can't understand why she has been drawn into Jacob's life so much, but enjoys his company, so she follows along The real Jacob Ruppert did leave a huge bequest upon his death to an unknown actress, and historically, that mystery was never really explained. Ms.van Alkemade has woven these two characters into the life of Colonel Ruppert and offers an explanation as to why Ruppert left his estate to an unknown, who wasn't family. I found that the book diverged too much from the original story as it delved deeper and deeper into alternative lifestyles of the early 20 century New York. I ike more history in books from this genre than what I got with this one. I'm ambivalent as to how to rate this book. It is fairly well-written, and the characters are fairly well defined, but the plot suffered as it seemed to me that it was all about the alternate lifestyles, and not about actual historical happenings. ( )