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. Beautifully-written, interesting, and insightful, historical fiction fans will enjoy Alva’s take on living during the Gilded Age as a Vanderbilt. 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. A Well-Behaved Woman is the story of a strong woman before her time who pushed boundaries and broke through them. 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. Laurel Thatcher Ulrich begins her new book, Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History, struggling to explain understand the appeal of an aside she made in the spring 1976 issue of an. A Well-Behaved Woman: A Novel of the Vanderbilts

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