The Cover Girl
A Novel
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
"Thrilling and glamorous as its runways and backstage parties, The Cover Girl is also heartbreaking and redemptive with an ending that made me cry. Birdie is a singular, unforgettable character whose story encapsulates so much of what led up to the #MeToo movement, and why the movement was so necessary."
—Ana Reyes, New York Times bestselling author of The House in the Pines
Find them early enough, and they will always be her girls.
Birdie Rhodes was only thirteen when legendary modeling agent Harriet Goldman discovered her in a department store and transformed her into one of Harriet’s Girls. What followed felt like the start of something incredible, a chance for shy Birdie to express herself in front of the camera. But two years later, she meets a thirty-one-year-old rock star, and her teenage heart falls hard as he leads her into a new life, despite Harriet's warnings. Then, as abruptly as it began, it’s over, like a lipstick-smeared fever dream. Birdie tries hard to forget that time—starting over in Paris, in the dying embers of the LA punk scene, in Boston at the height of the AIDS crisis. She’s not that person anymore. At least, that’s what she’s been telling herself.
Decades later, Birdie lives a quiet life. She works modest gigs, takes Pilates and mostly keeps to herself. Maybe it’s not the glamor she once envisioned, but it’s peaceful. Comfortable. Then a letter arrives, inviting Birdie to celebrate Harriet’s fifty-year career. Except Birdie hasn’t spoken to her in nearly thirty years—with good reason.
Almost famous, almost destroyed, Birdie can only make her own future if she reckons with her past—the fame, the trauma, the opportunities she gave up for a man who brought her into a life she wasn't ready for. Just like she’s not ready now. But the painful truth waits for nobody. Not even Birdie Rhodes.
For fans of My Dark Vanessa and Taylor Jenkins Reid, this striking debut novel explores the dizzying fallout of being seen and not heard in a high-stakes industry that leaves no silhouette unscathed.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In Rossi's alluring debut, an aging former fashion model reflects on her career and her troubling relationship with an older rock star when she was in her teens in the 1970s. Harriet Goldman, a modeling agent with an eye for young talent, discovers Birdie when she's 13. Birdie enjoys a few years of success, including her first runway show, and at age 15 she poses for the cover of an album by a famous rocker in his 30s. They have sex, and he convinces her parents to sign over custody so he can bring Birdie on tour. During their four years together, Birdie fails to become the breakout star Harriet promised she would be, and instead is relegated to catalog work and shoots where she's seen merely as a pair of legs. In a parallel narrative set in 2018, Birdie grapples with an invitation to a gala celebrating Harriet's long career and considers talking to a journalist for a story, all of which causes her to take a fresh look at the past from the perspective of the #MeToo-era. As Birdie reevaluates her relationships with the rock star and Harriet, the book rides the razor's edge of dramatic irony. Readers will root for Rossi's searching protagonist as she finds her strength.
