The Gilded Edge
Two Audacious Women and the Cyanide Love Triangle That Shook America
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- ¥1,500
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“The Gilded Edge is a compelling read from start to finish. Gripping, suspenseful, cinematic. This is narrative nonfiction at its best.”—Lindsey Fitzharris, bestselling author of The Butchering Art
Astonishingly well written, painstakingly researched, and set in the evocative locations of earthquake-ravaged San Francisco and the Monterey Peninsula, the true story of two women—a wife and a poet—who learn the high price of sexual and artistic freedom in a vivid depiction of the debauchery of the late Gilded Age
Nora May French and Carrie Sterling arrive at Carmel-by-the-Sea at the turn of the twentieth century with dramatically different ambitions. Nora, a stunning, brilliant, impulsive writer in her early twenties, seeks artistic recognition and Bohemian refuge among the most celebrated counterculturalists of the era. Carrie, long-suffering wife of real estate developer George Sterling, wants the opposite: a semblance of the stability she thought her advantageous marriage would offer, threatened now that her philandering husband has taken to writing poetry.
After her second abortion, Nora finds herself in a desperate situation but is rescued by an invitation to stay with the Sterlings. To Carrie's dismay, George and the arrestingly beautiful poetess fall instantly into an affair. The ensuing love triangle, which ultimately ends with the deaths of all three, is more than just a wild love story and a fascinating forgotten chapter. It questions why Nora May—in her day a revered poet whose nationally reported suicide gruesomely inspired youths across the country to take their own lives, with her verses in their pockets no less—has been rendered obscure by literary history. It depicts America at a turning point, as the Gilded Age groans in its death throes and young people, particularly women, look toward a brighter, more egalitarian future.
In an unfortunately familiar development, this vision proves to be a mirage. But women's rage at the scam redefines American progressivism forever.
For readers of Nathalia Holt, Denise Kiernan, and Sonia Purnell, this shocking history with a feminist bite is not to be missed.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Prendergast (Buying into English), an English professor at the University of Illinois, disentangles the mysterious lives of 1900s "New Women" Nora May French and Caroline "Carrie" Sterling in this high-stakes if uneven account of the Carmel literary colony. Founded in the early 20th century Carmel-by-the-Sea, Calif., the colony hosted such writers as Jack London and Upton Sinclair. At its height in 1907, French, who made up a love triangle with Carrie Sterling and her husband George, died by cyanide poisoning—the Sterlings each died by the same means years later. Prendergast sympathetically depicts French, an acclaimed poet of her time, as a woman whose life had been "cursed by the actions of neglectful and malignant men" but maintained her confidence while her male peers offered "scathing and patently misogynistic" responses to her work. Similarly, Sterling, an artist and the hostess of the Carmel writing colony, was branded by the press as the "know-nothing" wife of Bohemian poet George Sterling who tolerated his many indiscretions. While Prendergast's commentary is sharp, she fails to fill in the gaps of French's life between her arrival at Carmel and her death, making things feel incomplete. Still, this punchy feminist tribute offers a fascinating look at two forgotten women of the Gilded Age.
