New York, NY: Random House (2012)

Paperback.

This superb, wonderfully provocative follow-up to Karen Abbott’s debut bestseller, Sin in the Second City, tells the gripping story of Gypsy Rose Lee, a brainy stripper who became the unlikely embodiment of the American Dream.

Gypsy Rose Lee. A fascinating celebrity with a secret past, described by Life magazine as “the only woman in the world with a public body and a private mind, both equally exciting.” Set against the provocative worlds of vaudeville and burlesque, at a time when America was coming of age, American Rose is a rich and powerful portrait of Rose as a fascinating entertainer—and the woman she was behind the curtain.