What do Taylor Swift, Marilyn Monroe, Madonna and a teenage girl from Pittsburgh in 1900 all have in common? More than you’d think.
In this episode of Elena Meets the Author, I’m talking to New York Times bestselling author Allison Pataki about her eleventh book, It Girl, a gripping, fast-paced historical novel inspired by the true story of Evelyn Nesbit, America’s very first influencer. But this conversation is about a lot more than one book. It’s about what happens to young women when the world decides they’re too beautiful, too talented, and too powerful for their own good. And why that story keeps repeating itself.
Evelyn Nesbit’s life reads like something invented. From a Pittsburgh boarding house, where she lived with her widowed mother and younger brother, she became an artist’s model in Philadelphia at just 13, and by 16 she was taking Broadway by storm. Dubbed America’s Eve, her beauty and talent drew the attention of two very powerful men: Manhattan architect Stanford White and Pittsburgh millionaire Harry Thaw. What followed became known as the murder of the century.
But Allison’s real obsession isn’t the crime. It’s the woman at the centre of it, and the way history chose to tell her story. Eve, Helen of Troy, Cleopatra, Salome. She made him do it. She drove him mad. She’s the cause of it all. Evelyn was just the latest in a very long line.
We also get into Allison’s own story, from her two storytelling grandmothers to writing live TV news at ABC, to becoming a full-time novelist. She talks about how she finds her heroines, why she’s drawn to women that exist only in the footnotes of history, and as a mother of three girls, what it felt like to write the darker parts of Evelyn’s life.
She also reads from the prologue. It’s worth it.
00:00 Welcome and Premise
00:15 Meet Allison Pataki
02:08 Origins and Influences
03:26 Finding Her Heroines
05:26 Discovering Evelyn Nesbit
09:16 High Society vs Showgirls
12:11 Prologue Reading Crime Century
16:42 Agency and Swim Metaphor
21:01 Modern Echoes Taylor Swift
23:56 Writing the Dark Parts
26:26 Fun Research Mythic Tropes
31:25 Mom Life and Book Tours
33:06 Recommendations and Wrap
