The Bohemians

In 1924 New York, Lillian (Lil) Moore, an artist, and Leon Shaffer, an accountant, narrate this Jazz Age story of triangular love, art and its future, willing and unwilling sacrifices, heroes and heroines, dreams, visions and illusions, music, insanity, insomnia, fame and the lack of it, and how each era is similar and different from our own. Lil's desires and needs, as well as Leon's attraction to her, form the plot,  which includes philosophical discussions in a Chinese restaurant, a women's exhibition at an art gallery, a beauty contest, a visit to a museum to see King Tut, a movie audition, and swimming in a lake. The novel is studded with historical figures and other characters, including F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Sherwood Anderson, a Freudian analyst, gangsters, a more or less tame lion, absurdist artists and art lovers. This is a lyrical book about a transitional time of early cars, telephones, movies, sham medical cures, speakeasies, bootleggers, and jazz.

Laurie Blauner of Seattle, WA The Bohemians is Laurie Blauner's third novel. Her second novel, Infinite Kindness, won an Arts Special Project award from 4Culture, a Seattle arts organization. She has other grants and awards, including an NEA and an Artist Trust award. She has published six books of poetry. Her poetry and fiction have been published in The Nation, The New Republic, Georgia Review, New Orleans Review and other journals.