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  "path": "/books/2026/6/diamond-in-the-rough",
  "publishedAt": "2026-06-17T00:00:00.000Z",
  "site": "https://airmail.news",
  "tags": [
    "Air Mail",
    "New York",
    "READ ON"
  ],
  "textContent": "\n\n  Born in Mount Gilead, Ohio, in 1896, Dawn Powell chronicled the machinations of New York society with the cool distance of an outsider.\n\n##### A new edition of Dawn Powell’s 1942 novel, _A Time to Be Born,_ seeks to rehabilitate its author, whose society tales skewered the New York milieu and earned the admiration of Hemingway and Vidal\n\nBy Marlowe Granados\n\n“I want this new novel to be delicate and cutting—nothing will cut New York but a diamond,” Dawn Powell wrote in her diary. It is a fitting observation. When I read the novels of Powell, I imagine her writing as though carving a diamond out of the rough. It takes a particular kind of skill to be as precise as Powell is. She cuts and cleaves at her characters until their facets shine, and her prose has the same effect—cool, hard, and glittering. Powell’s New York is laid out before her readers with such specificity. It is an atmosphere full of clandestine studios, subterranean bars, and the swanky apartments of New York’s elite. READ ON",
  "title": "Diamond in the Rough"
}