Meet the real-life Rockette who inspired a glittering new novel

nypost.com:

“The Spectacular” (Dutton, out now). The novel follows Marian, a plucky young dancer in the 1950s, who defies her family’s expectations when she runs away from home to join the Rockettes — right as a mysterious bomber is terrorizing the city, leaving explosives in some of the Big Apple’s most iconic landmarks.Davis interviewed about a dozen Rockettes in the course of her research, but Lachenauer proved to be an invaluable resource, plying her with old programs and photos from her time there, as well as reading a manuscript and providing notes for Davis to make her tale as authentic as possible.“I was really intimidated because I don’t have a dance background,” Davis explains. “[But Lachenauer] mentioned that she had some archival material that she could send me, so I had things like the daily schedule, a floor plan, a map of what it was like.” Lachenauer even helped her with a chase scene set backstage. “I said to her, ‘Where would someone hide?’ And she came up with that [part of the book].”Lachenauer — now 83 and based in Monmouth Beach, NJ — danced with The Rockettes from February 1959 till July 1963.

Like Marian in “The Spectacular,” Lachenauer joined the troupe when she was 19 and lived in the famed Rehearsal Club, the all-ladies boarding house on 53rd Street for aspiring ingenues.“Right before I moved in, Carol Burnett moved out,” Lachenauer tells The Post. “I was 19 and having a great time.”Lachenauer, who goes by Sandy, grew up in a small town in Illinois and had never heard of the Rockettes before her best friend joined the troupe.