Aurora the Magnificent

In the golden light of Florence, where Renaissance art spills from every corner, American consul Jerome Foss has built a carefully ordered life among the expatriates. But order crumbles when Mrs. Aurora Hawthorne arrives, blazing with American modernity and accompanied by her striking daughter Estelle. She is magnificent, yes, but also unsettling: a woman who speaks too frankly, dresses too boldly, and refuses to perform the tired social rituals the Foss family has mastered. As American tourists descend upon the ancient city, the collision between old-world elegance and new-world restlessness ignites. Brownell writes with sharp wit about the comedies of cultural translation, what it means to be American in the capital of art, where beauty is everywhere and authenticity is nowhere to be found. Aurora is a force that exposes the contradictions buried in every tea visit and twilight promenade. This is a novel about what happens when someone refuses to be decorous, and the small explosions that follow.