Cleans Up Nicely: A Novel [Paperback]

When twenty-something artist Erica Mason moves from laid-back Mexico to Manhattan in the mid-1970s, she finds a hard-edged, decadent, and evolving art scene. Her life there leads her to a self-destructive string of affairs with men, alcohol, and drugs, but also, ultimately, to the self-respect that has long eluded her. ;After graduating from the University of Wisconsin with an honors degree in Latin American Studies, Linda Dahl worked as a freelance journalist in Mexico, Ecuador, and Brazil, with a particular interest in the arts. Based in New York since the mid 1970's, her books reflect her interests in the arts and love of research.Stormy Weather: The Music and Lives of a Century of Jazzwomen(Pantheon, 1984) was called “a brilliant work of oral history” byPublishers Weekly.Morning Glory: A Biography of Mary Lou Williams(Pantheon, 2000), was aNew York TimesNotable Book of the Year.Haunted Heart: A Biography of Susannah McCorkle(University of Michigan Press, 2006), wrote Leon Wieseltier inThe New Republic“is vivacious, tender, saturnine, industrious and deeply intelligent.” Her novel,Gringa in a Strange Land(Robert D. Reed Publishers), won the Writers in the Sky Award for Best Creative Writing of 2010. ;
; ; ; ; Linda has just completed a new novel,Cleans Up Nicely, to be published in
2013 by She Writes Press.
;“Erica Mason’s rite of passage is not only a love affair with art, men, alcohol, drugs, and jazz in the swirl that was the downtown scene in a radically evolving era in New York, but also a resurrection from addiction and self-delusion. At once fast-moving, funny, and heartrending, this is a deftly handled study of one gifted young woman’s path from self-destruction to self-knowledge, self-respect, and well-being.” —Randolph Hogan, formerNew York Times Book Revieweditor

“Cleans Up Nicelyis a pitch-perfect, picaresqulƒ—