Emily Hinton needs out. She comes from a small town in California where the church handbell choir concert passes for a decent way to spend a Saturday and she’s known all the boys since kindergarten. She dreams of sophisticated people, love, and Louis Vuitton. When she lands a job at the world-famous publishing house Morrow & Sons in New York, she knows that she is finally on her way. She packs her bags, says good-bye, and sets out for Manhattan, where she will fit in even if it kills her.In spite if her naïveté, she quickly becomes friends with the girls at work and begins to learn a thing or two about how things are done in Manhattan. She soon attracts the attention of the handsome Bennett, who, according to her friends, is a goody-goody who attends church every Sunday. What her friends regard as a “tragic waste” is just what Emily has been looking for, and she is soon swept into a whirlwind romance. An overnight visit to his parents’ home at Thanksgiving and his seemingly idle flirtation with one of her colleagues, however, give her second thoughts about what Bennett really wants. Her uncertainty about her feelings escalates even more when one of the hometown boys she left behind reappears in her life. Emily’s life at the office is also becoming complicated: an ambitious editor is breaking all the rules to publish a controversial book that demeans everything Emily believes in. The crisis comes to a head when she has to stand up for what she knows is right and risk losing it all.Balancing her passion for the glitz and glamour of New York with her determination to live by her morals in the challenging world of a youngManhattanite turns out to be much more difficult than Emily ever imagined. Her roundabout quest for happiness will endear her to readers ready to move beyond the clichés and easy answers of most chick-lit novels.