From Publishers Weekly
Literary Review editor Steinke's second novel (after The Fires) is a lively, sympathetic fictionalized account of the true adventures of Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, a poet, artist's model and friend of Marcel Duchamp whose irrepressible life bordered on the fashionably sordid. Fleeing her burgher home in Swinemünde, Germany, at age 19 for the liberation—and poverty—of Berlin circa 1904, Elsa learns early to lie about her past and dress outrageously (often in male clothing), attracting numerous men who provide entrée to high society. Three husbands determine the direction of her life: the first, August, is an effete, hashish-smoking architect; the second, his best friend, Franz, is a charming, tortured poet and con man who brings Elsa to New York only to desert her; and the last is a German baron who gambles away his fortune and abandons her as well. Yet Elsa is an intrepid heroine who continually rises from her own ashes, muscling her way into artists' parties with bon mots and conversation-stopping "self-apparel pieces." Reading an account of an interior life that is not entirely fictional and not entirely factual can be disorienting, but Steinke shows palpable admiration and respect for her proto-feminist protagonist. This is an intelligent, spirited work that stimulates interest in the baroness's work and times. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
*Starred Review* Novelists are drawn to the lives of artists like moths to a flame, and no writer could ask for a more incendiary protagonist than Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven. The provocative German dadaist was but a footnote in the annals of bohemian Greenwich Village until Irene Gammel's revelatory biography, Baroness Elsa (2002), appeared, and now Steinke (The Fires, 1999) attempts to get inside the head of this flamboyant poet and trailblazing performance artist. Steinke's wildly uninhibited Elsa, haunted by family tragedies and three extravagantly disastrous marriages and inspired by industrialization, ends up living hand-to-mouth downstairs from Marcel Duchamp, publishing her poetry in the plucky Little Review, and protesting everything from sexism to censorship by shaving her head and going forth adorned with a birdcage hat (with bird), soup-can brassiere, gum-wrapper jewelry, and a taillight. Sadly, her bravado masks an engulfing loneliness, and the brilliant flame of her boldly improvised life burns out of control. By evoking both the tactile details of her protagonist's precarious existence and her churning psyche, Steinke is able to embrace and transmute biographical fact, creating a fascinating character within a world-altering milieu, and exploring the dark side of creativity. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Publishers Weekly
"An intelligent, spirited work."

Playboy
"The baroness’s antics make the Andy Warhol crowd seem tame by comparison."

BookForum
"Steinke is a consummate prose stylist. She has a poet’s ear for words...."

Entertainment Weekly
"Steinke’s graceful prose adds intimate texture to a woman so cutting-edge that Duchamp called her ‘the future.’"

W Magazine
"A fascinating read."

New York Newsday
"Holy Skirts is a mighty book, as grand and peculiar and off-kilter as the Baroness’ found-object sculptures....a literary coup."

Book Description

In 1917 no one had ever seen a woman like the Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven. She regally stalked the streets of Greenwich Village wearing a bustle with a flashing taillight, a brassiere made from tomato cans, or a birdcage necklace; declaimed her poems to sailors in beer halls; and enthusiastically modeled in the nude for artists such as Man Ray and Marcel Duchamp, setting the city ablaze with her antics. Before today's outsized celebrities, there was the Baroness -- poet and artist, proto-punk rocker, sexual libertine, fashion avatar, and troublemaker. At the center of the Dadaist circle, the Baroness transformed herself into a living, breathing work of art.

Holy Skirts is a vivid imagining of the Baroness's story. Beginning in 1904, with Elsa's burlesque performance onstage in Berlin's Wintergarten cabaret, the adventures continue across Europe, through turbulent marriages and love affairs, until the Baroness finally lands in New York City, just before America enters the war. As she befriends Greenwich Village artists and writers, she defines herself as a poet, even as she breaks the bonds of female propriety.

In a beautifully written novel, René Steinke paints an exquisite portrait of this woman and her time -- an era of cataclysmic change that witnessed brutal war, technological innovation, the rise of urban living, and an irrevocable shift in the lives of women, who, like Elsa, struggled to create their own destinies. Holy Skirts is a celebration of resilience and imagination, anexploration of the world in which the modern woman was born, and a testament to the lost bohemia.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

In 1917 no one had ever seen a woman like the Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven. She regally stalked the streets of Greenwich Village wearing a bustle with a flashing taillight, a brassiere made from tomato cans, or a birdcage necklace; declaimed her poems to sailors in beer halls; and enthusiastically modeled in the nude for artists such as Man Ray and Marcel Duchamp, setting the city ablaze with her antics. Before today's outsized celebrities, there was the Baroness—poet and artist, proto-punk rocker, sexual libertine, fashion avatar, and troublemaker. At the center of the Dadaist circle, the Baroness transformed herself into a living, breathing work of art.

Holy Skirts is a vivid imagining of the Baroness's story. Beginning in 1904, with Elsa's burlesque performance onstage in Berlin's Wintergarten cabaret, the adventures continue across Europe, through turbulent marriages and love affairs, until the Baroness finally lands in New York City, just before America enters the war. As she befriends Greenwich Village artists and writers, she defines herself as a poet, even as she breaks the bonds of female propriety.

In a beautifully written novel, René Steinke paints an exquisite portrait of this woman and her time—an era of cataclysmic change that witnessed brutal war, technological innovation, the rise of urban living, and an irrevocable shift in the lives of women, who, like Elsa, struggled to create their own destinies. Holy Skirts is a celebration of resilience and imagination, anexploration of the world in which the modern woman was born, and a testament to the lost bohemia.

About the Author:

RenéSteinke is the author of The Fires. She is the editor in chief of The Literary Review and teaches creative writing at Fairleigh Dickinson University. She lives in Brooklyn.

FROM THE CRITICS

Wendy Smith - The Washington Post

Elsa's reckless courage is beginning to look like lunacy even to her bohemian comrades. Steinke wisely leaves the question open; we know that Elsa's syphilis is flaring up, and the illness could be driving her mad. The fragments of her poetry in the text are provocative and oddly beautiful, but the author makes no claim for her protagonist as a world-class artist. Instead, this fascinating and moving novel celebrates the baroness as a remarkable woman whose boldness took her to extremes that make most of us flinch.

Publishers Weekly