Allison Pataki already had a shelf full of published novels when her mother, during a taxi ride in New York City, made an offhand comment that would spark the next one.
“You should look into the real-life Gibson Girl,” her mother suggested, “because her life was fascinating and dramatic. She got pulled into a scandal that was known as the crime of the century.”
“Suddenly, I had to know more,” Pataki told the audience gathered for the Rye Historical Society’s annual fundraiser luncheon last month. Her latest book, “It Girl,” released in March, is inspired by the life of Evelyn Nesbit, the original “Gibson Girl.”
Gibson Girls were a familiar cultural trope in the early 1900s, the archetype of a new vision of American femininity — athletic, independent, and educated. Gibson Girls were named after their creator, illustrator Charles Dana Gibson, who used Evelyn Nesbit as his model for the early-century It Girl.
The event, held at Shenorock Shore Club, drew around 140 guests and raised over $30,000 for museum and educational programming and special events. It marked Pataki’s fourth appearance at the organization’s annual event. Before Pataki spoke, guests browsed a boutique featuring artful gifts — pashmina scarves, hand-carved wooden bowls, organic hemp products — by local vendors, with 20 percent of proceeds benefiting the Rye Historical Society.
Pataki introduced Evelyn Nesbit as a figure who emerged at a transformative moment in American history, when New York City was entering the 20th century amid rapid social and technological change. She described a city energized by innovation — automobiles replacing horse-drawn carriages, subways reshaping urban life, and photography and mass media transforming how Americans consumed news and celebrity culture.
At the same time, Pataki explained, Broadway and the theater world were exploding with opportunity, especially for women who could now build careers as actresses, chorus girls, and models. Their iconic images helped sell products, and their lives fascinated the public. In that atmosphere of excitement and reinvention, Evelyn Nesbit rose to extraordinary fame, becoming one of the defining female celebrities of the era. Charles Gibson was one of many artists to make Nesbit his subject.
Perhaps the most scandalous moment in Nesbit’s life came in 1906, when Nesbit’s husband — surrounded by New York high society figures on the rooftop theater of Madison Square Garden — shot a man he believed to be Nesbit’s lover.
Pataki offered a modern comparison: “Let’s just say it would be like if Travis Kelce shot and killed Harry Styles while having dinner with Taylor Swift.”
She called the incident a “once-in-a-generation feeding frenzy” for the press, one that cast Nesbit as a main character in the ensuring sensational trial — and ultimately sent her into hiding.
It was this moment in Nesbit’s history that presented a challenge for Pataki, who spent six years working on the book.
“I did not see the ending for her being taking the stand to have to justify the behavior of these awful men,” she said. “And that’s when I had this totally novel thought. I thought, ‘I write historical fiction. I don’t write biography. Why don’t I lean into what Evelyn is saying to me? Why don’t I give her a chance to choreograph this dance, to lead this story?’”
Pataki quoted the author E.L. Doctorow, who famously said, “The historian will tell you what happened. The novelist will tell you how it felt.”
“So that was what I was really excited to do with this book — to write a life story inspired by an incredible woman, but to give her a voice and agency, to pull her from the supporting-character role and put her center stage as the leading lady she deserves to be,” said Pataki of her 11th book.
It was a fitting setting for the sentiment: sunlight pouring through the windows behind her, the Long Island Sound glittering in the distance.
