Postwar Washington, D.C.

The growth of federal employment brought clerks, veterans, diplomats and temporary workers to Washington after 1945. Boarding houses and shared apartments remained important to people living away from family.

The capital combined expanding consumer life with segregation, security investigations and intense political pressure. Private relationships could become vulnerable to official suspicion.

The Briar Club uses one women's boarding house to bring domestic lives into contact with murder, espionage fears and McCarthy-era politics.