The Plight of Women in 1900
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This book is set in 1900, a difficult time to be a woman. A difficult time for a woman to survive without a man. So when Isabelle Bishop loses her husband and three out of four of her children in a shipwreck, she knows she needs to remarry to provide for herself, her elderly mother, and her surviving child, Mariah, age eighteen. She also knows this: Marrying for love – as she had the first time around – was not the answer to her problems. Marrying for money was. “Bills could be paid. Even better, they could disappear.”
When she catches the eye of one of New York’s wealthiest men, John Whitten, she hopes her problems are over. But a new predicament is about to come her way. Part of Whitten’s attraction to Isabelle is her family pedigree. Her father was a French aristocrat, Count de Forge. But Mariah also shares that pedigree. And Whitten wants to marry Mariah even though – at age sixty-three – he is more than three times her age.
Complicating the situation are two facts. I have already mentioned the financial problem. Despite the family’s aristocratic past, there are no family members to help the women. The family has been out of money for years, unable even to send boat fare to France. The second issue is Mariah’s reputation. She recently had a baby and placed it for adoption. This scandal and their poverty threaten all three women – they could be penniless and out on the street.
Suffice it to say Mariah marries Whitten. But she does it very much against her will and blames her mother. This causes a large rift between Mariah and Isabelle. This rift becomes a chasm thanks to the very bad, horrifically terrible (!!!) decisions on Isabelle’s part as the novel progresses. Through it all, Mariah’s relationship with her grandmother remains intact – and this turns out to be quite a blessing.
In a letter to readers at the start of the novel, the author tells the inspiration for her story. Her great-grandmother married her great-grandfather in 1908 when she was nineteen and he was fifty-seven. He was twice widowed and had four adult children. The great-grandfather was Agenor de Gramont. He traveled to Rome to meet a prospective bride, Clelia Ruspoli, who had recently been widowed. After meeting the family, however, de Gramont decided he would rather marry Clelia’s teenage daughter, Dona Maria. The Ruspolis agreed to the match. “Because that’s what people did with girls for thousands of years – gave them away, like jewels or money, traded for safety or wealth or status.”
Seeing the plight of women in this era is what the book is all about. Four main women are viewed. Beyond Mariah and Isabelle, we have Lavinia Van Wye and her maid, Hetty.
Lavinia’s husband recently died greatly reducing her finances. Though she has an annuity from him, she no longer has a home. Her late husband’s sons from his first marriage inherited and sold that. Without a home, she needs no staff, so she gives Hetty to John Whitten’s household hoping to get her back by marrying John. Even though she is his frequent bed partner and close friend, he opts for Mariah instead. This gives Lavinia every reason to plot against Mariah.
Clearly, there are lots of women at odds here.
Thankfully, Mariah finds a friend and ally in Hetty, a woman who is trying to rise above her station. Hetty’s ability to move around in the world at large – and her connections – come in handy when Mariah starts to write “fiction” about her marriage. When Hetty finds a publisher for the stories will all hell break loose?
You will want to read the book to see.
And when you do, you will want to boo for a man named Jay all along.
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I thank the publisher for an advance review copy of this book. It will be published November 10, 2026. Pre-orders are available now.
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