Not only will Alva best snooty Caroline Astor at her own game (helped by William’s wedding gift of Catherine the Great’s pearls), she’ll secure suitable marriages for her children and undisputed social rank for herself. sneeze, but to his credit he recognizes something-call it originality, single-mindedness, intelligence-that will vault his future heirs, if not his boorish grandpa, into the best society. The genuine blossoms on Alva’s dress make W.K. His most vexing problem is that Vanderbilt money is too new, barring his family from being “received” in Old Knickerbocker circles. Vanderbilt, grandson of the richest robber baron in America, is a horseman and yachting enthusiast (who, according to Fowler’s characterization, is not the brightest skipper in the fleet and a compulsive philanderer to boot). Taking cues from her vivacious pal Consuelo Yznaga (a half-Cuban sugar-cane heiress soon to be married to an English duke), Alva dons an ebony ball gown garnished with goldenrod blossoms to catch the eye of an heir. As the novel opens, 21-year-old Alva and her sisters, the children of formerly prosperous parents-all unmarried despite summers in Newport and Europe-are caring for their invalid widower father, facing bankruptcy and the unhappy prospect of letting out rooms. ( From the publisher.Portrait of the Gilded Age socialite and suffragist who famously followed her own advice: “First marry for money, then marry for love.”ĭoyenne and co-designer of palatial mansions in Manhattan, Long Island, and Newport, Alva Vanderbilt Belmont was born Alva Smith in Mobile, Alabama-half a century before the heroine of Fowler’s previous novel, Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald (2013). Meet Alva Smith Vanderbilt Belmont, living proof that history is made by those who know the rules-and how to break them. With a nod to Jane Austen and Edith Wharton, in A Well-Behaved Woman Therese Anne Fowler paints a glittering world of enormous wealth contrasted against desperate poverty, of social ambition and social scorn, of friendship and betrayal, and an unforgettable story of a remarkable woman. Ignored by New York’s old-money circles and determined to win respect, she designed and built 9 mansions, hosted grand balls, and arranged for her daughter to marry a duke.īut Alva also defied convention for women of her time, asserting power within her marriage and becoming a leader in the women's suffrage movement. The riveting novel of iron-willed Alva Vanderbilt and her illustrious family as they rule Gilded-Age New York, from the New York Times bestselling author of Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald.Īlva Smith, her southern family destitute after the Civil War, married into one of America’s great Gilded Age dynasties: the newly wealthy but socially shunned Vanderbilts. A Well-Behaved Woman: A Novel of the Vanderbilts

A well behaved woman novel