Our Kind of People
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
Fans of Bridgerton will love this "exuberant novel of manners for our own gilded age" (Stacy Schiff, author of Cleopatra) as we follow the Wilcox family's journey through riches and ruin.
Among New York City's Gilded Age elite, one family will defy convention.
Helen Wilcox has one desire: to successfully launch her daughters into society. From the upper crust herself, Helen's unconventional--if happy--marriage has made the girls' social position precarious. Then her husband gambles the family fortunes on an elevated railroad that he claims will transform the face of the city and the way the people of New York live, but will it ruin the Wilcoxes first? As daughters Jemima and Alice navigate the rise and fall of their family--each is forced to re-examine who she is, and even who she is meant to love.
From the author of To Marry an English Lord, an inspiration for Downton Abbey, comes a charming and cutthroat tale of a world in which an invitation or an avoided glance can be the difference between fortune and ruin.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The latest from Wallace, whose nonfiction work To Marry an English Lord partially inspired Downton Abbey, delivers a smart, perfectly executed look at New York City in the Gilded Age. The surprising marriage between socially impeccable debutante Helen Maitland and successful tradesman Joshua Wilcox is happy until 1874, when Helen must launch their teenage daughters into society. Alice, their fetching youngest, attracts suitors despite her ambiguous pedigree, while the oldest, Jemima, is bookish, opinionated, and striking rather than pretty. Further complicating the girls' debuts, Joshua's vision of masterminding a trans-Manhattan elevated railway is draining his modest capital. Convinced of the venture's promise, he uses their home as collateral for a short-term, high-interest loan from speculator Felix Castle. When Joshua defaults, Castle—a shrewd and cultured young businessman with a rakish reputation—forecloses. The family moves in with Helen's rigidly traditional mother, and Helen's trust in Joshua fractures. Jemima, meanwhile, finds Castle irresistible despite his contribution to their woes, and Alice prefers a disabled widower to the stylish youths her mother finds suitable. As each woman struggles, plans to bring Joshua's company public may transform their finances again. Wallace does full justice to the era's conventions, and her characters' attempts to navigate meteoric social and technological change are recognizably and deliciously modern. Fans of Daisy Goodwin and Curtis Sittenfeld will relish this.
