In this breathtaking debut novel, a daring dancer must take her twin brother’s place as a riveter high atop the in-progress Empire State Building to save her family from ruin.
Intrigued? Well read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from Gemma Tizzard’s Grace of the Empire, which releases on January 28th 2025.
After the death of their father, it’s up to Grace O’Connell and her twin brother Patrick to support their family as the Great Depression takes its toll on New York City. When Grace is laid off from her dancing gig and Patrick is injured at work on the construction of the Empire State Building, desperation leaves them only one solution: Grace must disguise herself as Patrick and take his place on the half-built skyscraper.
She soon proves herself as capable as any man on the steel, and her affection for the loyal men around her—especially Italian immigrant Joe—grows by the day. But when a terrible accident happens high above the city and Grace is the only one capable of saving her stranded colleague, she must make a split-second decision to risk everything or live with her conscience forever.
Set against the backdrop of a city at a crossroads, this electrifying story is full of heart and hope, family and friendship, and the sacrifices we make for those we love.
EXCERPT
When they reached the entrance to the site, Grace wanted to stop, look up and catch her breath. She burned to take in all the chaos of noise and motion, but Patrick wouldn’t, so she kept walking. This would be nothing more than a normal day for him, and so it had to be for her. She had to keep her face neutral despite the onslaught to her senses. Smoke already hung in the air, cranes swung, engines roared, and huge crowds of men were pouring in, talking and laughing, jostling her, catching up with colleagues and telling tales of the weekend. Trucks thundered by, and Grace tried not to flinch at the overwhelmingly deafening clang of metal and thwack of wood as materials were unloaded.
Seamus nudged her gently in the direction of the office where they had to sign in for the day, and she joined the line. For her first mistake, she found herself in front of Seamus, with no room in the crowd of bodies to maneuver herself behind him. She would have preferred to watch what he did first. Instead, she focused on the men ahead of her, filtering out the other noise to listen to their conversations. Before she had any real confidence in the situation, she was in front of a big oak desk, where a man with round wire-rimmed spectacles glanced up briefly.
“Patrick O’Connell,” she said confidently in her brother’s voice, silently rejoicing that the nerves she felt weren’t evident in her speech and she had said the right name.
The man cocked an eyebrow, clearly waiting for something else. Grace heard “Callaghan, carpenter” from the adjacent line. She kicked herself for giving a first name. It was a job title the man was waiting for. Her mind went blank, nothing but an expanse of white, a snowstorm at the North Pole. Steelworker? No, she remembered that much. Although it seemed like it would be the right answer, it was actually a completely different job. Even though they worked with steel, they were ironworkers. Or should it be more specific? Should she say catcher? Her mind was buzzing with interference, but no words would come. She stood with her mouth open for what felt like hours but was really only a couple of seconds. Was she going to ruin everything before even getting on-site?
“Riveter,” she blurted out of nowhere. She heard Seamus exhale heavily behind her.
The man gave her a slightly quizzical look but handed over an aluminum tag with a worker identification number on. Grace knew that someone would be making rounds twice during the day to check them, to make sure everyone who was meant to be on the site was there. She would also need to hand the disc back at the end of the day. She tucked it into her pocket and was tempted to keep her hands there; they were the thing most likely to give her away. Moving away from the office, she made the decision to put her gloves on, even though no one else had yet. Having her small hands exposed just seemed too risky.
She waited for Seamus by the elevators, spotting the Gagliardis approaching. Even Joe looked grudgingly impressed at her disguise.
“You’re in,” Seamus whispered as they headed into the elevator cage that would take them to the top of the structure. Connectors were already up there waiting for cranes to send up the first delivery of steel. They were the only people who worked higher than Grace was going, receiving the steel and temporarily fixing it in place, ready for the riveters to come along behind and secure it properly. They would be creating the twenty-first floor of the building.
“Don’t look down,” Joe mumbled into Grace’s ear.
The elevator started to rise at the same time her stomach began to drop. The ground fell away and she quickly found herself on an upward trajectory to the moment she’d been dreading. When the cage stopped, she made sure she was behind the rest of her gang this time, in position to follow them, copying everything they did.
She stepped out onto a temporary floor on the eighteenth story and watched men climb onto unconnected steel beams suspended between cables. Her knees were rubber and her throat started to constrict as she felt the wind push against her. Men gestured to the crane operators, who swung them into the air, and she watched, eyes wide, as they stepped off onto the bare steel beams even higher up. Looking out over the city, her breath caught in her throat. She had never been anywhere close to this high in her life. The buildings in the distance by the river looked to be the size of matchboxes, the details impossible to make out. The street traffic below was so far away it sounded muffled, and panic started to creep up her spine and tickle the back of her neck. She shook it away.
“Here, Patrick.” Seamus handed her a foot-long pair of tongs and a can. It was the first time Grace had ever seen the tongs, and as she took them in her hand, their weight surprised her. She turned them over and flexed her fingers to test them. The can was also smaller than the one she had practiced with. Her stomach hit the floor. How was she meant to catch with this? Her chest started to heave, her breathing heavy and labored. A hand on her arm pulled her back to reality.
“You can do this,” Joe said, his tone matter-of-fact, before he moved away.
“Are you ready?” Seamus asked right by her ear, and she nodded. The noise was already increasing as more people started work. It was frightening how isolated and alone it made her feel to be separated from the others by a wall of sound. Seamus gestured to where their starting position for the day was, on the nineteenth floor, soon to be moving to the twentieth, and Grace followed Joe’s movements exactly to get herself up onto the beam, silently begging her legs not to give way.
The sight of the steel frame teeming with men, moving all over it like insects, made her head spin. Vertigo gripped her and panic detonated in her body, reverberating in her limbs, her legs suddenly boneless and wobbling dangerously. Her heart jogged desperately between tight ribs as she forced air into lungs that suddenly seemed three sizes smaller than they had the day before. Her head felt light, and she was terrified of getting dizzy. She gripped hold of the steel column in front of her so tightly she wasn’t sure she would be able to let go long enough to catch anything.
Joe seemed to be ignoring her, busy with his own preparations, but Frank was watching her like a hawk. They were in position now, no one else within earshot, but the noise of the site had kicked up even further and was louder than anything Grace had ever known. Frank tapped her gloved hand with his to get her attention and raised two fingers to point at his own eyes, gesturing that she should look at him.
“Just like we practiced,” he said, raising his voice as far as he dared and speaking the words carefully so she could read his lips.
Grace nodded, but her heart was pounding like a steam engine, and the power of it alone seemed enough to knock her off the beam. She needed to shuffle her feet and find her balance. The others instinctively knew the width of the beam and where they were on it through years of repetition, but she couldn’t possibly know. She had no choice but to look down. Her plan was to glance at the beam directly below her and the position of her feet, but she couldn’t help but see straight down to the ground, an impossibly long way away. The design of the building was tapered, and the workers were high enough that the steel had already recessed inward, so she tried to imagine the flat area she could see below her as a floor, not too far away. Unfortunately, her eyes were more interested in the real street level, where little blobs were moving. She looked again and realized they were people. Her head whirled. The shock of it made her swoon slightly, her knees going weak. Her breakfast churned in her stomach, making her feel queasy. She closed her eyes, but understood immediately that only made it worse, and quickly opened them again.
“Come on!” Joe shouted at her. “Don’t think, work. Give yourself no time to think.”
With a monumental effort, Grace managed to pry her hands away from the column. She stood on the beam and searched for Seamus. It made her calmer to look into the building, where there was a structure and something substantial rather than empty air. She took a deep breath, noticing he was already heating rivets in the forge as they were getting into place. She thought back to her circus days, a fearless teenager performing precision moves with an audience watching her. This was just the same, she told herself. She cleared her mind and blocked out all other noise, movement, and distractions, concentrating on the beat of her heart until she could slow it down. The rest of the world melted away and all she could see was Seamus.
“Ready?” she heard someone shout but wasn’t sure who. With the paint can poised in front of her chest and the unfamiliar tongs in her other hand, she raised her thumb. She was ready.
Grace had never in her life seen anything so hot it glowed red, until the moment the first rivet was spinning through the air toward her—a comet in a shower of sparks. It was equal parts self-preservation and skill that guided her paint can into the right place to receive it. Seamus had aimed it perfectly, and it fell easily into the can. There was no time for any kind of celebration or self-congratulation as she took the tongs and lifted the rivet out, trying to ignore the constant movement around her threatening to distract her. She could feel the heat of the rivet on her face. “Wrong way!” Joe hissed in her ear. She was holding the rivet upside down. She let it go and picked it up again the right way, terrified of dropping it, then timidly tapped it on the steel. “Harder!”
She could barely make out what was being yelled at her through the cacophony of hundreds of other people doing their jobs. She banged the rivet again and saw cinders and dirt drop off, the orange glow already starting to fade.
“Quickly!” Joe motioned for her to put the rivet in the hole he pointed to. It was harder than she thought it would be, the fit necessarily tight, but she managed, and Joe immediately pushed his dolly bar against it to hold it in place. Frank lifted the rivet gun and set it to the exposed end of the rivet, sparks flying. Grace tried her best not to flinch. The noise was extraordinary, and she was sure she would be deaf by the end of the day. Despite warnings, it still took her by surprise that along with the rivet gun, everything was jumping and shuddering. The steel was shaking and her bones were rattling in her body. She clamped her teeth together to stop them chattering against each other, fighting the strange sensation of seasickness as she was jiggled around like she was on the worst streetcar ride of her life. It was terrifying, the height was nauseating, and her body and brain were overloaded by unfamiliar sensations, but she had completed her first rivet. She tried to tell herself they would get easier from now on, refusing to think that the process would need to be repeated hundreds of times more before the day was out.
Seamus sent the next rivet up and she caught it neatly again. It was clear that this was far more natural for him than what they had been trying to do on Saturday, throwing by hand. Grace felt the muscles in her back relax a little with the knowledge that every throw to her would be a good one. She moved quicker this time, picking up the rivet the correct way, tapping it harder and finding the hole. She hadn’t anticipated just how quickly the rivet cooled and lost its glow. The hotter it was when it went into the steel, the more malleable it was and easier to fix in place. Frank gave her a beaming smile, and Grace hadn’t felt pride like it since she was a child.
It wasn’t until the eighth rivet that she missed one. She watched it fall harmlessly, landing in an empty wheelbarrow on the floor below. She carried on. The hot cinders and sparks landed on her regularly, and more than once she had to pat at her shirtsleeves with her gloved hand to dislodge the burning fragments. She felt the tiny burns prick her skin, but there was no time to think about it. She had never concentrated so hard in all her life, and it seemed as if both years and mere minutes had passed when midday came around and Frank lowered the gun.
“Lunch!” he said, and relief flowed like warm, soothing water through her veins. Her ears were ringing, and she was starving. Scrambling down to the relative safety of the floor below, her body relaxed slightly as her feet finally hit something wider than a plank of wood. This was a new way of using her body, and the physicality of keeping her balance for such a long period of time was astonishing. Her muscles ached and objected already to the thought of getting back into position, even though the day was only half done.
