The Canary Cage is more than a saloon. It’s a place of intrigue, lost love, and regret. As Lily soon discovers, once you enter its doors, you may lose more than your reputation.
It’s 1899 and socialite Melissa Forrester has traveled from her home in Norfolk, Virginia, to Guthrie, Oklahoma. She’s there to visit her sister’s grave and learn why Augusta shot herself. Now alone in the world, Melissa is angry at God and at Tyler Buchanan, the man she holds responsible for her sister’s death.
Impulsively accepting employment at the Canary Cage, the saloon where her runaway sister had worked as a singer named “Roxie,” Melissa adopts an assumed name herself, and, for a time, lives a saloon girl’s life as “Lily.” She’s determined to seek out Buchanan, the man Roxie claimed to have loved. Lily’s bitterness burns, and she fully intends to make him pay for rejecting her sister.
Buchanan, Guthrie’s most successful newspaper publisher, turns out to be a tougher adversary than Lily expected. Tyler has his own demons to wrestle. Years earlier, he had fled Charleston, South Carolina, leaving scandal behind, and started a new life in Guthrie. When Lily arrives, he’s irresistibly drawn to her, and a familiar battle between head and heart resurrects. The more he tries to avoid her, the more she seems to be everywhere. With an aggressive, marriage-minded debutante added to the mix, Tyler has his hands full.
Lily grows closer to those who inhabit the Canary Cage and finds she has more in common with their dreams, struggles, and heartaches than she could have imagined. Experiencing intolerance firsthand, she begins to see herself and those around her in a different light.
She discovers more about the circumstances surrounding her sister’s suicide and Tyler’s shadowy past and wonders—could there be another, darker explanation for Augusta’s death? Perhaps there are even more important questions. Will the price Lily has to pay for her subterfuge be too high? If she continues to harden her heart, harboring unforgiveness and resentment, will she lose her true self and become someone she doesn’t want to be? Will her willfulness rob her of the friendships and the love she’s finally found in Guthrie? Will she, like other seemingly lost souls, be unable to escape the Canary Cage?
