First published 2025
Alexandra Bouvier grows up in Paris as the daughter of a French doctor and American nurse. Born in 1900, she learns to think independently from her parents and her grandfather, a respected Midwestern newspaperman. When World War I erupts, fourteen-year-old Alexandra watches her comfortable world collapse. Her parents leave for the front lines to work at a field hospital, facing poison gas attacks and brutal trench warfare. The war and Spanish flu pandemic destroy the lives of everyone Alexandra loves. By eighteen, she has lost nearly everything. She moves to Chicago to live with her grandfather and enrolls at the University of Chicago. Following her grandfather's path, she enters journalism and lands an internship at a newspaper. There she meets Oliver Foster, a reporter covering Prohibition-era gang violence. Oliver carries his own scars from devastating losses. Alexandra and Oliver feel drawn to each other, but both resist forming attachments. Alexandra's caution proves justified when new complications arise. Steel tells a story about recovering from trauma and finding the strength to trust again despite repeated heartbreak.
Genres: romance, american-fiction, historical-fiction, 20th-century, family-drama
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: enemies-to-lovers, found-family
Setting: Paris, Chicago, University of Chicago
Period: 1900s, World War I, Prohibition Era
272 pages · Hardcover · Delacorte Press
Content warnings: war