Believe You Me!

Meet Mary Gilligan: acrobatic dancer, keeper of a retired trapeze artist's mother, and woman who just had her engagement broken by an alligator. Yes, you read that correctly. When Jim, Mary's dance partner and fiancé, makes the catastrophic mistake of bringing an alligator to a party, the resulting chaos sends Mary careening into self-reflection and something unexpectedly bold: war service. Believe You Me! is a sparkling early-century comedy that treats its heroine's circus roots with affection and her sudden patriotic fervor with genuine weight. Putnam writes with a wisecracker's timing and a humanist's heart, tracing Mary's complicated navigation of love, career, and identity within the theatrical world that raised her. The novel captures a specific moment when women were quietly rewriting the rules, and Mary's choice to enlist in a women's automobile service rather than wait for her life to happen to her feels both radical and quietly earned. This is frothy entertainment with an undertow, a story that knows how to make you laugh while sneaking up on your emotions.