Juliana : (Books 1 & 2: 1941-1944) (Juliana Series) by Vanda Writer - Paperback

Juliana is a romance that takes place in 1941. Alice "Al"Huffman comes from the potato fields of Long Island with her beau, her best girlfriend and her girlfriend's beau to make it on the Broadway stage only to find she has no talent. On the kids' first day in New York City, they meet Maxwell P. Hartwell III, a failed nightclub owner, Broadway producer, and possible con man who, according to Al, looks a little like Clark Gable. He invites them to a nightclub where Al hears Juliana, the glamorous, perpetually-on-the-brink-of stardom nightclub singer, sing for the first time.  She thinks Juliana's voice sounds like, "warm milk slipping down the whole of my body." 

Through Max and Juliana Al is increasingly pulled into a secret gay underworld of men who wear hula skirts and women who smoke cigars, while her childhood friends continue in their "normal" lives.  Al glides easily between the two worlds until these worlds begin to collide.