So imports are needed, as few things are less exciting than kissing someone you’ve known since kindergarten. My parents knew their parents, and my parents’ parents knew their grandparents, and so it goes back to the very beginnings when Cleveland was considered the West, and nice families had to stick together.

I’ve known most of my Cleveland friends since we were infants, since crawling around together on faded Oriental carpets and cartwheeling in the grass at country club picnics. My husband, Jim, calls himself in jest an import-used to vary the breeding stock.Īnd variety is needed here. Nothing is more usual than Clevelanders of a certain ilk leaving, seeing the world, and then dragging a spouse back to settle down. And I married the loveliest man from Charleston, South Carolina, and convinced him to move back to Cleveland and start a family with me, as Clevelanders do. As a gesture of friendship, Ambrose gave May the necklace anyway.Ĭrisp as a gin martini, fresh as a twist of lime, The Necklace is the charming and intoxicating story “written with wit, compassion, and a meticulous attention to period and cultural detail” ( Kirkus Reviews) of long-simmering family resentments and a young woman who inherits a secret much more valuable than a legendary necklace. Upon his return, he discovered that May had married his brother Ethan, the “good” Quincy, devoted to their father. More than just a piece of jewelry, the necklace links Nell to a long-buried family secret involving Ambrose Quincy, who brought the necklace home from India in the 1920s as a dramatic gift for May, the woman he intended to marry.

As predatory relatives circle and art experts begin to question the necklace’s provenance, Nell turns to the only person she thinks she can trust-the attractive and ambitious estate lawyer who definitely is not part of the old-money crowd. A cold reception from the family grows chillier when they learn Loulou has left Nell a fantastically valuable heirloom: an ornate necklace from India that Nell finds stashed in a Crown Royal whiskey bag in the back of a dresser. In this “glittering, Gatsby-esque” ( Publishers Weekly) novel, two generations of Quincy women-a bewitching Jazz Age beauty and a young lawyer-are bound by a spectacular and mysterious Indian necklace.Īlways the black sheep of the tight-knit Quincy clan, Nell is cautious when she’s summoned to the elegantly shabby family manor after her great-aunt Loulou’s death.

The necklace claire mcmillan