Excerpt from Beautiful Little Fools by Jillian Cantor, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Daddy's punishment wasn't really a punishment at all, I decided. But a blessing. I'd worn my hair short ever since.


IN THE FALL of 1917, I was sixteen years old, and Daisy Fay was still my best friend and, as Daddy always said ever since the chicken incident, my worst influence. Her younger sister, Rose, was my age, and Daddy always wondered why she wasn't the one I spent time with instead. Rose was fine; I had nothing against Rose. But she wasn't Daisy.

"I don't like the way Daisy runs around with all those soldiers," he said to me over breakfast one morning that fall. Daddy and I had taken a walk through Belgravia Court last night after supper, and on the way home, we'd seen Daisy driving by in a car with a soldier. It wasn't the first time, and it wouldn't be the last, either. Daisy loved to play, to flirt. Daisy loved to be admired. "You know better than that, Jordan," Daddy was saying now. "I hope you're not off doing that with her."

"Oh, Daddy, she's just having a little fun," I told him. "And I have no interest in those soldiers. They're all so ... old." It was true. Most of them were in their late twenties or early thirties, and I, at sixteen, did not find them appealing whatsoever.

Daddy nodded approvingly, turned his attention back to his newspaper, and told me to go to the club to work on my swing. I finished the last bite of my breakfast, stood, and kissed him on the top of his round, bald head.

Daddy started teaching me golf when I was five, just after Mama died. He said he couldn't bear to leave me, so he would take me with him to the club on Saturdays. To his surprise, I picked up how to swing. And now, what would you know? Eleven years later, and I was a better shot than him, a better player than any other man in Louisville for that matter. Which was something he would remark on with pride to whomever he could, whenever he got the chance. Now Daddy was always after me to practice.

Most well-to-do fathers of daughters in Louisville worried about marrying her off to a man from a good family. Daddy imagined me on the professional golf circuit, winning championships. Never mind that the circuit only included men. Daddy believed that would change soon, that I would be a part of it. I loved him more for it. Because that was truly what I wanted for my future too. Not a man, not a marriage. Golf.

And the truth was, I agreed with Daddy about Daisy and the soldiers. What good would come of it? Eventually they'd all leave, ship out to this war so far away it almost felt imaginary. And what would Daisy be left with then?

When we were little girls, Daisy, Rose, and I used to play with Daisy and Rose's porcelain dolls, giving them pretend lives and hopes and dreams. And that was sort of how I felt about Daisy, hanging around with the soldiers. None of it was real. It was all playacting.

Until it wasn't.


"JORDIE," DAISY WHISPERED my name one lazy afternoon in October, not even a week later. "I have to tell you something."

We were lying across her giant four-poster bed, talking about what we should wear to Adelaide Cummings's engagement party that weekend. We both despised Adelaide, who was an incurable ninny. (Once, I'd overheard her poking fun at Rose's limp.) I couldn't have been more delighted that she was marrying a multimillionaire from Chicago and would move there with him directly after the wedding. Good riddance, Daisy had said with a giggle when Adelaide had first announced the engagement. Good riddance indeed. But the question we were hashing out, before Daisy announced her need to tell me something—should we wear our finest dresses to Adelaide's engagement party or something awfully ugly just to spite her and throw off the photographs?

I rolled over and turned my attention to Daisy, and whatever it was she wanted to tell me. Her face looked serious, her milky-white skin paler than usual. Her hair, though, was shiny as ever and splayed across her pillow. I reached my hand over and absently twirled a lock of it around my finger. "What is it, Daise?"

Excerpted from Beautiful Little Fools by Jillian Cantor. Copyright © 2022 by Jillian Cantor. Excerpted by permission of Harper Perennial. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.