Sepetys even learned that the jeweler who sold the glasses ended up poisoned to death after eating a dozen oysters in the Quarter. Willie, it turns out, was a brothel owner from the French Quarter in New Orleans. Sepetys is madly in love with history (her brilliant debut novel, Between Shades of Gray, is a very intimate look at a 15-year-old Lithuanian girl's experiences in one of Stalin's labor camps) and so she hired a researcher to try to find more information about the glasses. Still in its original case, the glasses were bought from a New Orleans jeweler, and engraved with the words from her friend Willie Robert. She received a pair of vintage opera glasses as a birthday present. In an interview about her new book, Out of the Easy, Ruta Sepetys describes an object that sent her on a wild and wonderful chase. A cast of colorful characters and evocative details from 1950s New Orleans form the heart of this fast-paced murder mystery set in the city's French Quarter.
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