Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk by Kathleen Rooney

Savvy 85-year-old Lillian loves taking walks.  On New Year’s Eve, 1984 she decides to have a fancy dinner at New York’s Delmonico where she has an interesting encounter that prompted her to walk further in the city to her new friend’s party.  Lilian reflects on her life’s ups and downs as the highest paid advertising copywriter for R. H. Macy’s during the 1930s. On her walk, she meets a limo driver, a security guard, a bodega clerk and even thugs whom she handles with ease. 

Rooney tells the story of a remarkable and feisty woman – based on Margaret Fishback - through the War, the Depression, hip-hop music and the onset of the Aids epidemic.  It is a good read!