Steve Zousmer

The Phantom Songbird of New York Steve Zousmer

It's 1958, a freezing night in New York, and Broadway gossip columnist Chick Lopritz is desperate. He doesn't have enough gossip to fill his column. So he breaks the rules and fabricates a story about a young Frenchwoman making an electrifying singing debut in a Greenwich Village nightclub. He names her Sandrine D'Avignon. To his amazement, readers are instantly and unquestioningly smitten. Sandrine seems to have touched a nerve, a need, a citywide yearning for an escapist fairy tale to brighten the gloom of a grueling winter, a recession and a tense Cold War with the Soviet Union. Readers clamor for more about her. Chick reluctantly provides it in daily columns building a shamelessly false melodrama of stardom, heartbreak, romance and triumph. And then columns are not enough. New Yorkers want to see her, meet her, touch her. Chick himself is not immune to the contagion of love created by this nonexistent woman. Frank Sinatra wants to bed her. Ed Sullivan wants her on his TV show. A dangerous Dutchman mistakes her for his long-lost love. Mobsters want her to star in a Las Vegas nude review. Chick, ashamed of the delusion he's created, would rather confess the truth than continue the lie, but nobody wants that.