Historical Fiction / Jazz Age Romance
Date Published: 07-14-2026
Publisher: Mission Point Press
The Beauty of Individual Things follows Margot Andrews, a young American woman swept from New York high society into the dazzling yet fractured world of 1920s London. When the transactional demands of privilege collide with betrayal and violence, leaving her disillusioned and adrift, she escapes to the freshwater shoreline of lost childhood summers.
With her past unrecoverable and her future uncertain, Margot searches for a different life amid Detroit’s dynamic and monied Prohibition era—with its yacht races, rumrunners, and industrial might. Set against a city on the rise, she must navigate her family’s ruthless pursuit of social standing, the magnetic pull of charismatic boat racer Ellis James, and the relentless echoes of her past. The story explores the weight of loneliness and the personal cost of love and reinvention as Margot decides whether to remain a fragile ornament of her family’s design or forge an identity that is beautiful, imperfect, and entirely her own.
No one tells a young woman that things
usually happen because of money, sex, or power. We learn it on our own. Polite
girls go on to elegantly suppress the notion, but most know it, and I was
nothing if not polite. It was different for Grace. She was a Maxwell. It wasn’t
in their nature to suppress things. They blew them up.
An early lesson remains etched in
my mind. It was a summer day in 1913. The Maxwells had secured a white
clapboard weekly rental on the shores of Elk Lake, tucked among the rolling
farmland and evergreen forests of northern Michigan.
The screen door slammed. I shaded
my eyes as Uncle Fred crossed a narrow strip of beach, wearing a faded
black-and-white-striped bathing costume.
“You’ll burn, Fred,” Aunt Lou
clucked from her canvas sling chair under the shade of a lurid yellow umbrella.
Cousin Grace doubled over,
shrieking with laughter. “You look like a ghost,” she sputtered. I
suppressed my giggles by intently staring at a beached canoe.
Uncle Fred hadn’t brought any
alcohol on that vacation.
“It’s called drying out,” Grace had
whispered one night after we were tucked away in our shared bed. “The booze
turns dusty and blows away … or something.”
I never saw the dust, but for two
or three rocky days Uncle Fred kept to his room, scolding us through the door
to lower our voices. Then one bright morning, the dust cleared. All breakfast
table chatter quieted as he stood at the head of the table, bright-eyed and
eager to lead us on bracing outdoor excursions involving tree
identification—white pine versus red—campfires, and fish brought home on
stringers. I felt sorry for the fish, but they were delicious.
Now, after nodding in acceptance of
his daughter’s ribbing, Uncle Fred called to me, “Margot, I’ll see you at the
end of the dock.”
I immediately stopped giggling. I
had been forbidden from docks and floating canoes because I didn’t know how to
swim. At ten years old, I was mortified by this humiliating precaution yet too
frightened to do anything constructive about it.
Aunt Lou had dismissed all petulant
objections. “The water doesn’t care, child. It’ll drown you all the same.”
I found Cook and requested wine to
go with my dinner. She packed a half-bottle in a basket along with some chicken
salad and strawberries. I complimented her on her shortbread recipe, and she tucked
in six. I was swinging the basket and humming a little tune as I walked back to
the gardener’s cottage, then stopped short. Ellis was tying his boat off at the
dock. He had no reason this time, but there he was, like it was the most
natural thing.
I waved, then set my boots on the
porch and my hat on the chair. I looked from my stockinged feet to the cottage
door, then to Ellis. He tipped his head at my confusion but didn’t move, and I
suspected I had confused him too.
“Turn around,” I called, tracing a
small circle in the air.
He turned and faced the water.
I rolled down my stockings and stuffed
them into the boots, then picked up the basket. Resisting the urge to run, I walked
barefoot to the end of the dock. “What a nice surprise. I have dinner,” I said,
handing him the basket. “Where are we going?”
He offered his hand, “You haven’t
asked me if I want to go.”
Asking that question would amount
to asking someone if they would like ice cream without bothering to mention
that it was laced with arsenic. I smiled instead, which felt vaguely wrong,
too.
“I already know the answer,” I
said, stepping into the gorgeous mahogany runabout.
I should have remained on that dock
and watched his eyes grow shallow after I politely, yet firmly, sent him away—but
I didn’t. He threw off the line and headed west, and it may have been the most
dangerous thing I had ever done.
The swells on the lake were smooth
and the evening sun warm. The wind whipped my hair as I attempted to appear
nonchalant while watching the safety of the shoreline recede by the second. The
engine was loud, and neither of us spoke until he pulled back the throttle as
we approached Peche Island at the mouth of the river.
“Does anyone live there?” I asked.
“Not anymore,” he said. “We should
be all right. No shoes required.”
Ellis tied off at a crooked dock,
and we walked among the shadows of the trees and stepped over rocks along the
bank until we reached a patch of grass with a view of the Windsor shoreline. He
took off his Carhartt coat and smoothed it on the ground.
“Are you sure about that?” I asked.
“Won’t hurt it,” he said.
“Thank you,” I said, taking a seat.
He sat on the ground next to me. “Was
it too fast for you?”
I leaned back on my hands. “I
thought I was playing it so calm and collected.”
“Holding onto the side that tightly
won’t help if something happens, only nothing is going to happen,” he said.
“I didn’t think anything bad was
going to happen. It was just fast.”
“It wasn’t that fast.”
“It was fast enough.”
“I’ll go slower on the way home,”
he said.
I looked to the water shining
silver in the evening light. The earth felt cool under my palm, and I brushed
my fingers along the soft spring grass. The edges of our hands briefly touched,
then moved away. I shifted my gaze from the river to Ellis. He raced toward
things like finish lines, and money, and possibility. I ran away from things. What
is it like, I wondered, to feel your life with every heartbeat?
The corners of his mouth rose
imperceptibly as he waited for my reply.
“No, don’t,” I said. “I’ll try to
be less scared. I’m tired of it anyway.”
Tiny moments change lives, too.
About the Author
Karen Thomas Yoo was born and raised in Grosse Pointe, Michigan. She graduated from the University of Michigan and received an MBA from Duke University. When she isn't writing, she can usually be found in her garden or on a paddleboard in Lake Michigan. A mother of three grown children, she lives in Grosse Pointe with her husband. This is her first novel.
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