Cory, Pamela.  Hassie Calhoun: A Las Vegas Novel of Innocence.  Minneapolis, MN: Scarletta Press, 2011.  368 pages, $15.95 (paperback)—Author Pamela Cory delivers the perfect cocktail of hope and devastation in her latest novel, Hassie Calhoun: A Las Vegas Novel of Innocence.  With one hand, Cory offers her readers untarnished hopes of the young and uninitiated, and with the other she delivers the inescapable realities of the real world and the people who live there.  To concentrate the drama, she sets this coming of age novel on the stages of Las Vegas, a place known for attracting and exploiting those souls who make the mistake of hoping that every bright light in Las Vegas is actually a spotlight awaiting a star.

The reader meets Cory’s protagonist Hassie Calhoun as she embarks on a new life at the Las Vegas Sands Hotel in 1959.  She is breathtakingly beautiful, young, and a talented singer.  She also carries with her the weight of a troubled past.  In other words, for the story that Cory attempts to tell, Hassie Calhoun is the perfect protagonist.  Fittingly, this perfect protagonist shines in a setting that can only be described as Las Vegas at its best.  The imagery is vivid.  The lights are bright, the music is romantic, and the people are larger than life.  To Hassie, Las Vegas is full of possibility, hope, prosperity, excitement, and to the reader the dangers of all of this loom on every page. 

As an inexperienced star, Hassie’s naiveté dictates the direction of her life and her young career.  Immediately upon her arrival, she finds her way into the arms of the notorious Sands general manager, Jake Contrata, a man who she loves, who can help her career, and who also holds the potential to hurt her tremendously.  As a reader, you want for Hassie to be happy with Jake, perhaps Hassie would even be the breath of fresh air that Jake needed to become a better man, but it can never come to pass.  In fact, Hassie’s early relationship with Jake sets the model for her actions and decisions throughout the rest of the book. 

As doors begin to open for Hassie and her career, the reader is pulled further and further into Cory’s riveting plot.  The plot is not so fascinating because of some sort of heartwarming twists and turns that Hassie makes on her way to realizing her dream of singing on the Copa Room stage, though.  Rather, it is a masterful study in a character who wants a dream so badly that she gets lost in pursuing it, losing all of herself and her ability to reason while doing so.  She has plenty of chances.  She develops a friendship with Frank Sinatra, the famous crooner and Las Vegas icon who was in a position to help a struggling young singer.  She even meets a young John F. Kennedy, but it all appears to be too much for the young girl making her way. 

Even with her good luck and opportunities, and even with the reader pulling for her to succeed, Hassie’s decisions and her singular focus finally catch up to her.  Amidst the glitz and glamour of Las Vegas, Hassie’s tumultuous relationship with Jake Contrata goes too far.  She is forced into an interlude in Reno where she grooms her dark side and continues to develop into a popular local act and even the beginnings of stardom.  Her life is never boring, and intrigue and suspense culminate as Hassie’s fame builds and brings her back to sing in Las Vegas at the Tropicana.  Even though she has achieved some level and fame, though, the reader is left wondering if she will ever achieve her lifelong Las Vegas dreams, and if she does if she will have lost too much of herself along the way to truly appreciate her accomplishment.

In the back of the book, author Pamela Cory provides a list of questions for readers to ponder.  The first on the list begins by asking, “How badly do you want to slap Hassie?”  Although this question may seem too dismissive for a character who ultimately lives a relatively complex and successful life chasing her dream of stardom, it does in fact get to the heart of Cory’s development of Hassie’s character.  Like Vegas offering the duality of hopes and exploitation, Hassie’s character offers a frustrating duality of innocence and stubborn arrogance that leads to so many of her painful choices.  Perhaps more important to the question, though, is that Cory develops this excellent character and story so well that the reader will indeed want to slap Hassie.