The Shoemaker's Pursuit

In 1952, a young Italian shoemaker named Paolo DeLuca fell in love with the daughter of a widow and hand-crafted for her a gift: a pair of high heels. The girl would not wear the scandalous shoes. But her mother would. Those heels would inspire the most famous shoe of the 20th Century, what fashion critics would dub the Ray-Ban Wayfarer of footwear: the DeLuca Rampa. And then, the shoes were lost. Hollywood icons and waitresses, rock stars and architects, thrift shop owners and prostitutes all walk a mile in these shoes over the next half-century as Paolo tries to track them down. We’ll strut across the silver screen with a Blonde Bombshell who became a legend in the shoes. We’ll risk it all with a wife who decides that fantasy and reality lie too far apart. We’ll be a fly on the wall as the shoes guest-star on one of the biggest hits of the MTV era, among other lives the shoes touch between their creation on DeLuca’s workbench to the final resting place. The Shoemaker’s Pursuit is a collection of eleven interconnected tales following the path of the most famous pair of shoes ever made. Let’s take a walk on the wild side.

 

"Beauchamp's episodic yarns master the classic erotica recipe for success, which deftly combines a sense of artiness with tawdriness. Some readers will like the tales' smoldering, well-paced narrative buildups, flirty banter, and obsessive attention to fashion. Others will enjoy the shamelessly lascivious characters, graphic sexual descriptions, and foot fetishism. Over the course of the book, Beauchamp's richly textured prose is punchy and evocative, and it's fully stocked with sharply etched characters that feel like actual people and don't come across as simply glossy pinups. The end result is a work of crackerjack couples' erotica with writing so good that readers won't be in a hurry to skim along to the next big scene. Entertaining, energized accounts of sex romps with real literary flair." - Kirkus Reviews

 

­A Kirkus Review Editor’s Choice, June 2021