Excerpt from The Chaperone by Laura Moriarty, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

"I don't really know her," Cora said. She looked back out through the blurred windshield, at people ducking out from a streetcar, running for cover. Alan had taken a streetcar to work, so she could have the Ford.

"Then I'll inform you. Myra Brooks is a tiresome snob." Viola turned to Cora with a little smile, the ostrich plume grazing her chin. "I'll give you the latest example: she just sent a note to the secretary of our club. Apparently, Madame Brooks is looking for someone to accompany one of her daughters to New York this summer. The older one, Louise, got into some prestigious dance school there, but she's only fifteen. Myra actually wants one of us to go with her. For over a month!" Viola seemed pleasantly outraged, her cheeks rosy, her eyes bright. "I mean, really! I don't know what she's thinking. That we're the help? That one of us will be her Irish nanny?" She frowned and shook her head. "Most of us have progressive husbands, but I can't imagine any one of them would spare a wife for over a month so she could go to New York City, of all places. Myra herself is too busy to go. She has to lie around the house and play the piano."

Cora pursed her lips. New York. She felt the old ache right away. "Well. I suppose she has other children to look after."

"Oh, she does, but that's not it. She doesn't take care of them. They're motherless, those children. Poor Louise goes to Sunday school by herself. The instructor is Edward Vincent, and he picks her up and takes her home every Sunday. I heard that right from his wife. Myra and Leonard are alleged Presbyterians, but you never see them at church, do you? They're too sophisticated, you see. They don't make the other children go either."

"That speaks well of the daughter, that she makes the effort to go on her own." Cora cocked her head. "I wonder if I've ever seen her."

"Louise? Oh, you would remember. She doesn't look like anyone else. Her hair is black like Myra's, but perfectly straight like an Oriental's, and she wears it in a Buster Brown." Viola gestured just below her ears. "She didn't bob it. She had it cut like that when they moved here years ago. It's too short and severe, a horrible look, in my opinion, not feminine at all. But even so, I have to say, she's a very pretty girl. Prettier than her mother." She smiled, leaning back in her seat. "There's some justice in that, I think."

Cora tried to picture this black-haired girl, more beautiful than her beautiful mother. Her gloved hand moved to the back of her own hair, which was dark, but not remarkably so. It certainly wasn't perfectly straight, though it looked presentable, she hoped, pinned up under her straw hat. Cora had been told she had a kind, pleasant face, and that she was lucky to have good teeth. But that had never added up to striking beauty. And now she was thirty-six.

"My own girls are threatening to cut their hair," Viola said with a sigh. "Foolish. This bobbing business is just a craze. When it's over, everyone who followed the lemmings over the cliff will need years to grow their hair out. A lot of people won't hire girls with bobbed hair. I try to warn them, but they won't listen. They just laugh at me. And they have their own language, their own secret code for them and their friends. Do you know what Ethel called me the other day? She called me a wurp.That's not a real word. But when I tell them that, they laugh."

"They're just trying to rattle you," Cora said with a smile. "And I'm sure they won't really bob their hair." Really, it seemed unlikely. The magazines were full of short-haired girls, but in Wichita, bobs were still a rarity. "I do think it looks good on some girls," Cora said shyly. "Short hair, I mean. And it must feel cooler, and lighter. Just think—you could throw all your hairpins away."

Viola looked at her, eyebrows raised.

"Don't worry. I won't do it." Cora again touched the back of her neck. "I might if I were younger."

Excerpted from The Chaperone by Laura Moriarty. Copyright © 2012 by Laura Moriarty. Excerpted by permission of Riverhead Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.