Summary of Lies Between Floors by Patti R. Albaugh
Margaret Landings hasn’t been honest with herself or anyone else for a long time. The year is 1955, and Margaret leaves her job as an editorial assistant in Pittsburgh to return to Ohio to be with her dying mother. When not at the hospital, Margaret passes time working as an elevator operator at Graham’s Department Store and finds that the elevator is both a prison and a window into people’s lives—lives that become topics for the romance stories she writes and publishes under a pseudonym. Her writing is supposed to be an outlet for the unmarried and restless Margaret, but townspeople and friends begin to recognize the characters in her saucy stories, and her authorship is exposed. Margaret soon learns that she has become the observed, and her attempts to hide her past and present activities backfire. Loose talk reveals the existence of her illegitimate son, and thinking she has found him she considers motherhood the second time around. The struggle for privacy mounts as she engages in her own clandestine affair. Margaret eventually learns that hiding who you are only causes people to search for you even harder.
