First published 2001
Louise Ciccone arrives in New York City with thirty-five dollars and dreams of conquest. She sleeps on floors, dances in clubs, and claws her way through the music industry with calculated ambition. The young woman from Michigan transforms herself into Madonna, crafting each controversy and reinvention with surgical precision. She battles record executives, manipulates the media, and burns through relationships while building an empire. Her hunger for fame consumes everything in its path, including the people who love her. Yet beneath the manufactured personas and strategic provocations lies a deeper question: can someone who has made herself into a brand ever find authentic connection? This imagined portrait explores the price of becoming an icon when the person and the product become indistinguishable.
Genres: american-fiction, 20th-century, contemporary, biography-memoir, music, 21st-century
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: rags-to-riches, reinvention, self-made
Setting: Michigan, New York City
Period: 20th-century, 21st-century
424 pages · Paperback · Sidgwick & Jackson