Masquerade and Hearts Design

Liz arrives at school and finds herself in a dorm made from a series of row houses. Each floor has separate single rooms opening into a hallway and sharing a bathroom. Her floor has 4 rooms and the residents of those 4 rooms are the main characters in the book.

The first floormate Liz meets is Cara Jamison. Cara is formal, quiet and reclusive. She’s very nice. We learn early on that she is hiding something and fears exposure, so she is staying aloof. This story was written in the early 1960s. Cara’s secret is that she is Black, but a trick of genetics kept hre skin light and she had been mistaken for a white girl and placed in this dorm. She fears that if her secret became known, she might not be allowed to attend the school. Once she arrived, at the school at the start of the school year, she realized that the school has at least one other Black student, but she’s in too deep and stays hidden.

The third room belongs to Melanie Prill, who arrives later. She is sleek, attractive, stylishly dressed and a social climber in a family of social climbers. She lives in an upscale development where everyone is judged by the size and extras that their houses feature. She latches on to Liz as a fellow traveler and decides that Liz is the only one worth interacting with.

Last of all is Penny Saunders. Penny is shy, insecure, small and young looking with no style, no sophistication and frightened of life. She hides in her room with her National Geographic magazines planning trips that she’ll never take and learning as much as she can about traveling the world. She comes from rural Pennsylvania, the daughter of two retired parents who has hidden from a social life throughout her adolescence. She’s pale and colorless and destined to be overlooked. Melanie makes fun of her and calls her the Mouse.

The story is now set. As the school year begins and runs its course up to Christmas vacation, we watch the young women explore their environment, grow, change, expand or contract and face ups and downs. The alliances on the dorm floor shift and change. The man on the train reappears and brings along a fellow student and Penny and Liz begin dating. Melanie has a revolving door of college men dating her. Cara stays to herself but discovers a wonderful world in her studies and a real friendship beginning to grow with Penny and Liz.

In the weeks before Christmas, all four of the women face some hard realities and some wonderful opportunities and are forced to make some life changing decisions. The book takes us into their lives as these changes and alliances shift. The original title of Masquerade subtly acknowledges the persona changes, the hiding from life and the growth or lack thereof in the four women. College life is in the background. The book focuses on Four House and that particular floor and the residents and their lives in and out of school. Gilman Butters allows us to get to know them well, care about them and their new acquaintances, and to become invested in their lives and the ultimate outcomes. It’s well written with well defined characters. We can’t avoid caring.