Sir Walter Scott introduced the word "glamour" to many people in the world in his poem "The Lay of the Last Minstrel":

Sae soon as they saw her weel-far'd face,
They cast the glamour o'er her.

In Scott's poem "glamour" is a spell. In Secrets of the Model Dorm, Amanda Kerlin and Phil Oh unravel the spell of glamour in the model industry, an industry with more secrets than Vegas. Behind the strobe lights of photography, the paint, and the seasonal plumage of high fashion hides a salacious reality that most people, including the 18-year-old Pollyanna protaganist Heather Johnson, never knew existed.

The book takes place in modern-day New York City A.T. (anno Twiggy Lawson), and follows the education of the starry-eyed young model from Florida in the emulous brat race of the model reality. Johnson joins a hot new model agency and has to share a modest but well-located dorm with a group of passionate and rollicking young international models who are all trying to land the dream shoot amidst an atmosphere of sex, drugs, and outlandish parties while being lost in a haze of cigarette smoke and Metamucil martini breath.

What sounds like a look into the life of Tom Wolfe's Charlotte Simmons is multiplied by the fickleness of an industry searching through a flock of achingly beautiful girls for the one with that certain je ne sais quoi, with an added requirement that once found she must immediately lose 20 pounds.

In the frenzy of trying to remain in the eye of the fashion storm, Heather Johnson covets the romance of Robert du Croix, a rich fashionista shot-caller who just fell off the dreamboat. Feeling like so much merchandise Heather starts to question her place in the fashion world as a jet set mannequin and has to choose between being a sculptress or a sculpture.

Secrets of the Model Dorm is a sweet and sour tale of a dream questioned and an unlikely required textbook for those with the stomach to stroll the catwalk.