In the summer of 1895, at the height of the Gilded Age, Newport, Rhode Island was the summer playground of American nobility. Three young and beautiful heiresses from rival families struggle to define their place within the House of Vanderbilt, balancing love, birthright, and responsibility to their respective families with their own hopes and desires. Each has the potential to attain the prize---the mantle of MRS. VANDERBILT, the "American Queen". -Twenty year old Gertrude, daughter of the current "Mrs. Vanderbilt" and Cornelius Vanderbilt II, is torn between her sexuality and her parents' insistence that she be properly married to a man who will add social status to their ruling branch of the House of Vanderbilt. -Gertrude's first cousin Consuelo, daughter of Alva Vanderbilt and William K. Vanderbilt, is being forced into a loveless marriage with England's Duke of Marlborough. Alva believes that if Consuelo is the first American to become a European Duchess, both she and her branch of the Vanderbilt family will attain status equal to her nemesis, the reigning Mrs. Vanderbilt, and her longtime adversary, the current "Queen" of High Society, Mrs. Caroline Astor. -Gertrude's brother Neily Vanderbilt has been in love with Grace, of the House of Astor, since they were teenagers. Several years earlier, as the most sought after debutante, she was secretly engaged to Neily's older brother, William Vanderbilt heir apparent, who died while studying at Yale. Mrs. Vanderbilt threatens Neily, the next in line that marrying an Astor would mean giving up his birthright, along with the social status and the riches that would make him one of the wealthiest and most powerful men in the world. As the families' matriarchs and patriarchs rule and manipulate the lives of their offspring to achieve their own aims, their children will be forced to choose between love and independence or status and wealth. Seen through the eyes of an eighteen year old lady's maid, and written in the second person, the time-honored stories of these young women, their suitors and lovers, secrets and betrayals, are told through a fictional author who uses alternate history to share their struggles and pain with empathy and insight.
Author: Ari Newman
Publisher: Ari Newman
Published: 02/08/2018
Pages: 156
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.52lbs
Size: 9.02h x 5.98w x 0.36d
ISBN: 9780998667232
About the Author
Raised in Providence, Rhode Island, Ari Newman is a film producer, lecturer, writer, amateur gourmet chef, and a community activist for which he was honored with the first Charlotte Bloomberg Award presented to him in 1993 by Mayor Michael Bloomberg. During his senior year at Boston University he produced his first feature film, Squeeze, which was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award and released by Miramax Films. His films have appeared at countless international film festivals, including the Sundance Film Festival, at which Next Stop Wonderland was purchased for one of the largest sums ever paid for a Sundance film. In the United States he released All My Loved Ones starring Rupert Graves as Nicholas Winton, the stockbroker who organized the Kindertransport which saved the lives of over 600 children during World War 2 and was Slovakia's official Best Foreign Language Film submission to the 72nd Academy Awards. His most famous film is National Lampoon's Van Wilder considered by many to be Ryan Reynolds break out film. Mrs. Vanderbilt is his second book. In early March 2017 he released AMERICA FIRST A Modern Fable, a story about a modern day civil war which became the first book to have been both written and published after the 2017 Presidential Inauguration.
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