The Life of a Showgirl But Make It Historical Fiction Books...

Based on real women.

If you’ve been around The Literary Assistant for a while, you know I love when art mirrors art… when a song, a movie, or a any expression of inspiration captures the same spark that makes a story come alive. It’s all about the vibes.

Taylor Swift’s latest album, The Life of a Showgirl, has been on repeat for me.

Naturally, the book lover in me couldn’t help but think of the historical novels that carry the same feels.

So here are five songs I can’t stop listening to, each paired with a historical fiction novel that echoes its themes of feminine resilience, reinvention, and legacy.

Credit: Entertainment Weekly

The Fate of Ophelia

The Mood - Tragic, poetic, haunting.

A song steeped in heartbreak and introspection. It’s the sound of a heroine realizing she’s both facing her undoing and has the choice to pick her savior.

You Should Read - Finding Margaret Fuller by Allison Pataki

In the company of Ralph Waldo Emerson and his circle of enlightened friends, the young, beautiful, and brilliant Margaret Fuller becomes “the radiant genius and fiery heart” of the Transcendentalists. She inspires Louisa May Alcott, sparks Nathaniel Hawthorne to create Hester Prynne, and forms close bonds with Henry David Thoreau and Emerson himself. However, Margaret’s soul yearns for more than poetry and drama, leading her on a journey of adventure and self-discovery.

From hosting a women-only literary salon in Boston to becoming the first woman permitted entry to Harvard’s library, Margaret defies societal conventions as an activist for women’s rights and a champion for humanity. On the gritty New York streets, she spars with Edgar Allan Poe and reports on the work of Frederick Douglass. And when offered an assignment in Europe by editor Horace Greeley, Margaret becomes the first female foreign news correspondent, mingling with the likes of Frédéric Chopin, William Wordsworth, and George Sand. In Rome, she embarks on a passionate love affair with a Roman count, causing an international scandal. As a mother and a countess, Margaret enters a new fight for Italy’s unification.

With a star-studded cast and an epic sweep of historical events, this is a story of an inspiring trailblazer, a woman who loved big and lived even bigger—a fierce adventurer who transcended the rigid roles ascribed to women and changed history for millions, all on her own terms.

Elizabeth Taylor

The Mood - Glamorous, self-aware, and glittering with reinvention.

This song channels old-Hollywood opulence here. You get the ache of the spotlight and the art of performing your own legacy.

You Should Read - The Blue Butterfly: A Novel of Marion Davies by Leslie K. Simmons

New York 1915, Marion Davies is a shy eighteen-year-old beauty dancing on the Broadway stage when she meets William Randolph Hearst and finds herself captivated by his riches, passion and desire to make her a movie star. Following a whirlwind courtship, she learns through trial and error to live as Hearst’s mistress when a divorce from his wife proves impossible. A baby girl is born in secret in 1919 and they agree to never acknowledge her publicly as their own. In a burgeoning Hollywood scene, she works hard making movies while living a lavish partying life that includes a secret love affair with Charlie Chaplin. In late 1937, at the height of the depression, Hearst wrestles with his debtors and failing health, when Marion loans him $1M when nobody else will. Together, they must confront the movie that threatens to invalidate all of Marion’s successes in the movie industry: Citizen Kane.

Opalite

The Mood - Dreamlike, introspective, and quietly defiant.
A song that glows. It’s self-aware, giving the vibe that we all desire to be truly seen.

You Should Read - Learning to See: A Novel of Dorothea Lange, the Woman Who Revealed the Real America by Elise Hooper

In 1918, a fearless twenty-two-year old arrives in bohemian San Francisco from the Northeast, determined to make her own way as an independent woman. Renaming herself Dorothea Lange she is soon the celebrated owner of the city’s most prestigious and stylish portrait studio and wife of the talented but volatile painter, Maynard Dixon.


By the early 1930s, as the America’s economy collapses, her marriage founders and Dorothea must find ways to support her two young sons single-handedly. Determined to expose the horrific conditions of the nation’s poor, she takes to the road with her camera, creating images that inspire, reform, and define the era. And when the United States enters World War II, Dorothea chooses to confront another injustice—the incarceration of thousands of innocent Japanese Americans.

Father Figure

The Mood - Complex, raw, and full of moral tension.
This song wrestles with protection, power, and the invisible boundaries that define love and sometimes blur it.

You Should Read - An American Beauty by Shana Abe

1867, Richmond, Virginia: Though she wears the same low-cut purple gown that is the uniform of all the girls who work at Worsham’s gambling parlor, Arabella stands apart. It’s not merely her statuesque beauty and practiced charm. Even at seventeen, Arabella possesses an unyielding grit, and a resolve to escape her background of struggle and poverty.

Collis Huntington, railroad baron and self-made multimillionaire, is drawn to Arabella from their first meeting. Collis is married and thirty years her senior, yet they are well-matched in temperament, and flirtation rapidly escalates into an affair. With Collis’s help, Arabella eventually moves to New York, posing as a genteel, well-to-do Southern widow. Using Collis’s seed money and her own shrewd investing instincts, she begins to amass a fortune.

Their relationship is an open secret, and no one is surprised when Collis marries Arabella after his wife’s death. But “The Four Hundred”—the elite circle that includes the Astors and Vanderbilts—have their rules. Arabella must earn her place in Society—not just through her vast wealth, but with taste, style, and impeccable behavior. There are some who suspect the scandalous truth, and will blackmail her for it. And then there is another threat—an unexpected, impossible romance that will test her ambition, her loyalties, and her heart . . .

The Life of a Showgirl

The Mood - Dazzling ambition, self-creation, and the price of beauty.
The title track feels like a love letter to every woman who has had to sparkle while building her own empire from scratch.

You Should Read - A Well-Behaved Woman: A Novel of the Vanderbilts by Therese Anne Fowler

Alva Smith, her southern family destitute after the Civil War, married into one of America’s great Gilded Age dynasties: the newly wealthy but socially shunned Vanderbilts. Ignored by New York’s old-money circles and determined to win respect, she designed and built nine mansions, hosted grand balls, and arranged for her daughter to marry a duke. But Alva also defied convention for women of her time, asserting power within her marriage and becoming a leader in the women’s suffrage movement.

With a nod to Jane Austen and Edith Wharton, in A Well-Behaved Woman Therese Anne Fowler paints a glittering world of enormous wealth contrasted against desperate poverty, of social ambition and social scorn, of friendship and betrayal, and an unforgettable story of a remarkable woman. Meet Alva Smith Vanderbilt Belmont, living proof that history is made by those who know the rules—and how to break them.

This is for the women past, present and future. You are strong.

Have you listened to Life of a Showgirl? Do you have any favorite songs?

And which historical novel captures some of these songs for you?
Drop your pairing in the comments!

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