Saint Mazie by Jami Attenberg

The Rainy-Day Pick

No matter how carefully you checked the Farmer's Almanac (now available as an app, naturally) for the days of your planned your vacation, you might just find yourself waiting out a rainstorm. If so, you'll be a lot happier if you've brought along Jami Attenberg's latest charmer (our previous favorite: the hilarious, heartbreaking The Middlesteins) The novel's protagonist, Mazie Phillips, is a Jazz Age party girl who cares for homeless and needy New Yorkers during the Great Depression, recording her secrets, loves and longings in diary. Ninety years later, the diary is discovered by a documentarian on the hunt for a story to anchor her film. While your travel companions while away the afternoon putting together a jigsaw puzzle or playing endless rounds of Uno, you'll listen to the story of a fearless, brass woman ahead of her own time who believes, no matter what people tell her, "I'll be out in the world as I please."