Instead of the Thorn: A Novel

Chicago, 1916. At a dinner party overlooking Lake Michigan, Linda Barry arrives like a breath of fresh air into a room thick with convention. She swims, she laughs too loudly, she refuses to perform the demure theater her mother's circle demands. When Bertram King, serious and smitten, begins paying his addresses, the novel poses an urgent question: will Linda trade her freedom for the security of a name? Burnham, writing at the dawn of the modern era, captures a world on the verge of transformation, where new money meets old expectations and a new kind of woman refuses to choose between happiness and independence. The prose fizzes with period sparkle, but Linda's restlessness feels startlingly contemporary. This is a romance wrapped in social comedy, but beneath the ballroom wit lies genuine tension about what women were allowed to want.