The American Heiress by Daisy Goodwin

A book review

Cora Cash, the central character in The American Heiress is the daughter of a staggeringly wealthy father and an ambitious mother in Gilded Age New York. In their set, keeping up with the Joneses can involve parties featuring the release of live, gilded hummingbirds. "The other hostesses would think a touch grimly that Nancy Cash would stop at nothing to impress, and in the morning the maids would sweep the tiny golden bodies into a surrendered heap."

For the debutantes of the 1890s, marrying a titled Englishman represented the pinnacle of success. So when Cora, shepherded to England for this purpose, attracts a duke entirely on her own, she can hardly turn him down, especially since he is not only attractive but considerate. It's true that his estate badly needs the infusion of funds she can provide, but he seems to genuinely care more for her than for her money.

Cora's first challenge, a steep one, is learning aristocratic British social customs, so different from the flashier customs of America's upper set. In some ways, the British seem less restrictive - no American blueblood would socialize with actresses and poets. But the lines one must not cross are very real, if subtle, and Cora navigates a treacherous minefield. Her husband proves to be similarly mysterious. She knows little of his past, and her attempts to please him often misfire, shocking and disappointing him instead.

Although the plot follows a classic historical romance storyline, its focus on Cora's personal growth, combined with an elegantly understated writing style, moves it out of the genre. Cora is a flawed but ultimately sympathetic heroine. Her cold, anxiously striving mother has been a blundering newcomer in New York society just as Cora will be among the titled English. Cora's lady's maid has complex allegiances, tolerating Cora's unwitting cruelty because she craves the status and opportunities offered by a position usually closed to women of her color. The American Heiress is an unusually assured debut novel. (2010; 468 pages, including an Acknowledgements section mentioning sources and separating fact from fiction)