This was an incredibly hard book to find first because pretty much nobody carries it, and second because there are MANY other books with the title of "Blue Horizon" that you have to wade through. This one was written in 1940.

In some ways, you might consider this book very sappy, and the plotline telegraphed clearly from the very beginning. A young girl, barely 18, is out in the streets of New York City trying to find a job as an interior decorator. She has some training in it, but had planned on a life of leisure until her older brother was having trouble paying his way through medical school. Now she is bent on getting a real job to help the family out. She's very immature - speaks before thinking, makes judgements about people in a snap that are usually wrong, but she has a good heart.

She lands a job in a shop with a pair of female owners who seem opposite each other and who of course Janet completely misreads. The other girl in the shop is also misread. We get the slow progression as Janet goes from a duster of shelves to a person who can be trusted to choose fabrics and more. In the meantime, there are a variety of love triangles forming to distract Janet from her tasks.

What I found fascinating was not the plot - which is pretty straightforward - or the character development - which is equally straightforward. I found it intriguing that my grandmother was reading this in 1941 - i.e. barely as WWII was beginning. This was before Rosie the Riviter and the thought that women were great workers (or SHOULD be working). In fact, the story begins with the shop having an opening because the previous female worker got married and therefore quit. Working was considered a way to pass the time until a woman got married. And even then, one of Janet's older friends says that women in HER day would never work - they would embroider, dance, sing, and have fun. Worrying about money was a man's job - first her father's, then her husband's.

So it's very interesting that we have the combination of the two older (apparently unmarried, gasp!) women running the shop, who never talk about why they're single. Then Janet who is doing this to help her family, and Natalie who is the spoiled rich girl who does this as a lark. offer two other reasons for women to work.

SPOILER ALERT

It's even more interesting that when Janet is proposed to, by an architect she works with, he does NOT expect her to quit her job! In fact, she is planning on opening up her own branch office of the decorating store, and he is supporting her in this! So he is fully expecting this to be a two income household where they work together on tasks. Talk about an enlightened book!

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