"A luminous and epic piece of literature; it's as if John Irving and Djuna Barnes had collaborated, each bringing to the page the fiery best of their various gifts, the dark and lyrical and bizarre and sexual and comical and violent and mysterious and supremely heart-breaking spectacle of wide, wild lives..." - Antonya Nelson

Based on the life of Julianna's grandmother who was raised in a house of prostitution in the 20s and 30s, The Madam is a deeply personal look at the women in her family's past. To listen to an interview with Julianna and her grandmother, Mildred Lane, on NPR, click here. The paperback of The Madam includes a Q and A with Julianna that gives the story behind the writing of the novel. "Profoundly different from anything she has done before, THE MADAM is an extraordinary novel which will open a whole new phase of what already looks like a brilliant career." -Madison Smartt Bell "... haunting, luminescent and irresistible ... a tour de force of a novel..." -Christine Wiltz, author of The Last Madam "Beautifully rendered, this story is as brave and unique and full of surprises as the madam portrayed within it." -Elizabeth Strout "... exquisitely written, rich in lyrically rendered detail and peopled with sentient characters of depth and complexity." -The Tennessean "[A] beautiful tribute." -The Historical Novels Review "...haunting ... " -The Washington Post Book World "... sensuous and sad, hardscrabble and full of unexpected tenderness." -Elizabeth Graver "Baggott's world ... brings to mind John Irving's The World According to Garp ... Full of lush description and raw emotion." -The Greensboro News & Record "Think of Angela's Ashes...crossed with Cold Mountain" -Star News "Baggott's insights into the selling of sex and women's depthless capacity for improvisation in the fight to survive and to defend their loved ones are galvanizing in their intensity and drama, and her cathartic and commanding novel is a provocative paean to unconventionality, unexpected alliances, courage, and autonomy." -Donna Seaman, Booklist -Boston Herald Book Club Selection, October 2003 -Optioned by Jason Blum, Producer The Madam was published by Simon and Schuster’s Atria Books/Washington Square Press in Fall 2003.