Texas Pages

From the Oct. 22, 2006 Dallas Morning News:

If you can't say something nice...
Junior League gives former member's devilish novel the silent treatment
By MICHAEL GRANBERRY
Staff Writer

Seriously, folks, Linda Francis Lee had no intention of hurting anyone's feelings.

All she did was write a book, The Devil in the Junior League, which is getting rave reviews, will soon become a Hollywood movie and was blessed with 100,000 copies for its first printing. Ms. Lee, who won't give her age - "38 and holding," she says - was, for years, an avid Junior Leaguer.

So does that mean the Junior League likes her book?

Uh, not exactly.

"Well," sighs the Texas Tech grad who grew up in El Paso, Austin and San Antonio. "It's been mixed. Some members have actually loved the book and said, 'Wow, you must have been a fly on the wall ...'"

As for others, well, consider the words of John Murphy, the spokesman for Ms. Lee's publisher, St. Martin's Press.

Mr. Murphy notes that, soon after the book was published, St. Martin's had plans to partner with Saks Fifth Avenue to stage a reading, signing and fashion event in Atlanta. But, Mr. Murphy says, the national office of the Junior League ordered individual chapters "to have nothing to do" with promoting The Devil in the Junior League.

That's confirmed by Barbara Taylor, the chief marketing officer for the Association of Junior Leagues International, which is based in New York City. Its position, she says, is firm. As in firm and stern.

"We don't become involved in endorsing or supporting books or products that use our name without authorization," says Ms. Taylor, who was introduced to the Junior League during her girlhood in Highland Park.

She says the Junior League has 293 chapters in four countries (the U.S., Mexico, Canada and the United Kingdom). She defines its mission as "building the potential of women, promoting volunteerism and improving communities through trained volunteers."

Reminded that Ms. Lee has nothing but happy memories of her own Junior League experience, Ms. Taylor, once again, invokes the party line: "I hope she understands that we are obligated to protect our trademark. Therefore, we have alerted our individual chapters that the book is not endorsed by the Junior League."

The book, Ms. Taylor says, "is a work of fiction, and it makes unauthorized use of the Junior League name in the title and throughout the book."

Is that a threat?

"No," she says, insisting that the organization has no plans to take legal action over the so-called trademark issue. "We're simply careful to protect our trademark. Therefore, we have alerted our chapters that the book is not endorsed by the Junior League."

At the very least, the league's stance appears to have had a silencing effect as chilly as a New York winter. Officials from the Dallas office didn't even bother to return our calls.

Sally Richardson, St. Martin's publisher, responded to this unforeseen brouhaha by sending letters to the presidents of every Junior League chapter in the country and giving them free copies of The Devil in the Junior League.

"She has not received a single response," Mr. Murphy says.

Oh, well. Ms. Lee went ahead with bookstore signing parties in Dallas on Sept.5 and in Houston on Sept.7. And in El Paso on Sept. 11, she did three signings - at Junior League headquarters. She had the full backing of El Paso's Junior League chapter, which chose to defy the national office's opposition, all in favor of the hometown girl. A percentage of the proceeds went to Junior League projects, says Ms. Lee.

Kelly Saxton, 25, who attended the Dallas event at Borders Books & Music, says she approached the book signing with a mixture of curiosity and skepticism. The cover of Ms. Lee's novel struck her initially as a not-so-subtle play on The Devil Wears Prada, all the way down to the pitchfork on the cover.

But after hearing the author, she came away impressed. Ms. Saxton was drawn to the book, she says, because she, too, grew up in a high-society world.

She likes Ms. Lee's "bubbly, good, debonair attitude" and how she comes across as "vulnerable. She's honest. In some ways, she resents high society but at the same time wants to be a part of it. I understand that struggle. I have the same one."

*

So, you may be asking, what's all the fuss about?

For starters, The Devil in the Junior League is a highly readable piece of fiction that burrows into the world of what its publisher calls "Texas' high society bluebloods." A world in which "wealth and prominent names trump all ... where more than a few ladies hide secrets under their well-coiffed façades of impeccable manners."

It's set in the fictional town of Willow Creek, Texas, where the Junior League is exclusive and not exactly welcoming to undesirables. At the center of the story is 28-year-old Fredericka Mercedes Hildebrand Ware (Frede to her friends), who has, as they say, been a Junior League lady beyond reproach. Frede, of course, has a scheming husband who betrays her, steals her money and then disappears only to re-emerge and kick her out of her very own house! At this point, as you may imagine, poor Frede has hit the proverbial skids.

Frede then seeks legal assistance from what the publisher calls her "tasteless, gold-chain-wearing, nouveau riche neighbor and lawyer, Howard Grout." Mr. Grout can and will help, but as ol' Will Shakespeare would say, ah, there's a rub.

And what a rub it is. Frede has to accomplish the near-impossible: Help Mr. Grout's stiletto-heeled, Spandex-wearing wife, Nikki, ascend to the inner sanctum of the Willow Creek Junior League. Out of desperation and fueled by a desire to win back her fortune and seek vengeance against her ever-so-loathsome spouse, Frede agrees to her lawyer's terms.

Thus comes a modern, Junior League version of the My Fair Lady story. Which means it has juicy appeal for Dallas-born screenwriter Amy Talkington, who was hired to write the movie version. It's a world Ms. Talkington knows well. Her grandmother Dorothy Harris Savage was a president of the Dallas Junior League; her grandfather Wallace Savage served as Dallas' mayor from 1949 to 1951.

Her mother, historic preservationist Virginia McAlester, "did much of her work in saving East Dallas and Fair Park under the rubric of the Junior League," Ms. Talkington says.

So what's Amy's impression of the Junior League?

"It's a loaded question," she says with a laugh. "It is an amazing organization, but as it's depicted in Linda's book, it's taken to a bit of an extreme."

And how?

"The idea of creating a sort of 'in' club takes the Junior League into kind of a negative place." And yet, Ms. Lee is a gifted novelist who writes "these amazing characters," Ms. Talkington says. The movie has yet to be cast, "but the roles of Frede and Nikki are just really juicy. I can picture the best of the best actresses wanting to play them."

As for that so-called trademark issue, well, says Southern Methodist University professor David Haynes, it's nothing new, and Ms. Lee couldn't be on safer ground. After all, fiction has for years been awash in books about rogue CIA agents, whose novelistic creators make no attempt to give the agency a made-up name. A hit Broadway musical, Damn Yankees, used the name of a Major League Baseball franchise to focus its playful wrath.

Mr. Haynes, the head of SMU's creative writing program, says Junior Leaguers may feel offended, but he contends that a trademark issue is the last thing weighing on their minds.

"So they're taking their case to the court of public opinion," he says, "which is what people always do when they can't go to an actual court."

*

It's hard to imagine Linda Francis Lee upsetting anyone. She's a bright, articulate Kappa Kappa Gamma alumna who considers her years in the Junior League the time of her life. Junior League members work hard and do "so much good for the community," she says, and if the Junior League has ever once aroused any emotion in her, it's pride.

Before scoring with The Devil in the Junior League, Ms. Lee published more than a dozen romance novels. She describes herself as someone who lives her life largely in her head and who sought to tell a My Fair Lady-like story with the Junior League and high society as the backdrop.

"Basically, for me," she says during an interview at The Mansion on Turtle Creek, "this is a story about fitting in, and the things people do to fit in."

The story began to crystallize after she and her husband moved to the wilds of New York City in 1999.

"I started thinking about the secret handshakes of life we all have to learn," she says. "I wanted to set it in the world I knew."

What moving underscored more than anything, she says, is how she loves and misses Texas, even the Junior League.

"There's a graciousness to Texas that's missing in New York," she says, "and I love New York. I love the driven energy of it. There's no room for any softness. I think of Texas women as velvet hammers and New York women as just hammers."

So does the controversy surrounding the book make her nervous?

Before she answers, she sighs and then says, "It doesn't make me nervous because this book, at its heart, is very much positive about the Junior League. Because I loved my years in the Junior League.

"The message of the book is how these women come together to rise above their personalities for the greater good - and that's the Junior League. This book is not about the Junior League, it's about women. It just happens to be set in the Junior League.

"I didn't write the book to be controversial. Perhaps I'm naive, but I never thought that would be the case. So some of the things that have happened have been quite a surprise. And, again, I love the Junior League. I never thought this would happen."