Diamond in the Rough (opens in new tab)

Born in Mount Gilead, Ohio, in 1896, Dawn Powell chronicled the machinations of New York society with the cool distance of an outsider. A new edition of Dawn Powell’s 1942 novel, A Time to Be Born, seeks to rehabilitate its author, whose society tales skewered the New York milieu and earned the admiration of Hemingway and Vidal By Marlowe Granados “I want this new novel to be delicate and cutting—nothing will cut New York but a diamond,” Dawn Powell wrote in her diary. It is a fitting observa...