BOOKISH FRIDAY: “A WELL-BEHAVED WOMAN”

Welcome to another Bookish Friday, in which we  share excerpts from books…and connect with other bloggers who do the same.

Let’s begin the celebration by sharing Book Beginnings, hosted by Rose City Reader; and let’s showcase The Friday 56 with Freda’s Voice.

To join in, just grab a book and share the opening lines…along with any thoughts you wish to give us; then turn to page 56D and excerpt anything on the page.

Then give us the title of the book, so others can add it to their lists! What a great way to spend a Friday!

Today’s feature is a book I have had since October 2018: 

A Well-Behaved Woman, by Therese Anne Fowler…

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Book Beginning:  When they asked her about the Vanderbilts and Belmonts, about their celebrations and depredations, the mansions and  balls, the lawsuits, the betrayals, the rifts—when they asked why she did the extreme things she’d done, Alva said it all began simply:  Once there was a desperate young woman whose mother was dead and whose father was dying almost as quickly as his money was running out.  It was 1874.

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Friday 56:  Alva stopped to let a fish cart pass in front of her.  She was so weary, and so hungry, and her troubles seemed to be multiplying by the minute.

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Synopsis:  Alva 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. Ignored by New York’s old-money circles and determined to win respect, she designed and built nine mansions, hosted grand balls, and arranged for her daughter to marry a duke. But Alva also defied convention for women of her time, asserting power within her marriage and becoming a leader in the women’s suffrage movement.

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. Meet Alva Smith Vanderbilt Belmont, living proof that history is made by those who know the rules—and how to break them.

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Would you keep reading? 

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