After her first book Between Shades of Gray topped the New York Times best-seller list, won literary awards and was translated into 22 different languages, Ruta Sepety has written Out of the Easy, her second novel.

Where her first book focused on historical fiction, this book focuses more on family and an identity struggle a teenager deals with. That’s not to say there is a lack of history; the novel is set in a wild, crazy New Orleans in the 1950s.

Her new novel has been on the New York Times Bestseller list for a few months. It features Josie Moraine, who is a prostitute’s daughter.

The book, written through Josie’s eyes, opens with her honest thoughts at age 7, when her mother goes upstairs with an unknown man and leaves her in a hotel lobby. Later she realizes her mother works for Madam Willie, as one of her “nieces”, in the French Quarter.

From the first page, it’s easy to see Josie is very different from her mother or any of the other women in the French Quarter. She prefers the local bookstore and hangs around the owner Charlie who takes her in as his own by giving her a room above the shop. There she, after spending so much time with him at the bookstore, quickly becomes close friends with Charlie’s son Patrick.

Even though Josie has found a small place of her own and feels safe around Charlie and her best friend Patrick, that doesn’t completely protect her; she still feels watched and unsafe. With men around town being familiar with her mothers “work”, Josie gets a lot of offers from men to be one of her first customers. Despite trying to avoid this world, a strange murder makes her feel the need to explore it.

The novel is filled with laughter, heartbreak and hatred; all from a 17-year old girl who works to overcome all the obstacles in her past, break away from her mother’s ways and is trying to find a way to attend college.

Throughout the book, Sepety uses vivid details to make the words come alive. Readers will feel like they are watching a movie. She makes the reader experience everything from the hatred Josie feels about her mother’s work to the dedication she has to make a better life for herself. This book is great for any readers who love dealing with a roller coaster of emotions in one novel.