Peregrine Hill : A Novel

By the New York Times bestselling author of The Christie Affair, a novel set in Gilded Age New York about a desperate mother and headstrong daughter navigating a world built on mens appetites and womens silence

"A luminous, entrancing novel...The Gilded Age springs to vivid life in these pages, but beware, for not all that glitters is gold." Nita Prose, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Maid series

At the dawn of the 20th century, widow Isabelle Bishop still believes in lovebut she knows only money can save her. After losing her husband and three of her children in a shipwreck, she has one chance to rescue what remains of her family: her daughter Mariah and her elderly mother. When Isabelle captures the attention of John Whitten, one of New Yorks wealthiest men, she dares to hope that fortune might finally favor her.

But Whittens interest is not in Isabelleits in eighteen-year-old Mariah, still reeling from a romantic but disastrous scandal. When Whitten discovers the secret mother and daughter have tried to keep buried, he uses it to his advantage, threatening to expose them unless Mariah accepts his proposal. For the sake of their survival, Isabelle makes a devils bargain: She will urge her daughter into a marriage she knows could destroy her.

Mariah quickly realizes her husbands home is a gilded cage. Yet even under his watchful eye, she begins to carve out passions of her own, finding an unexpected ally in her ambitious maid, Hetty, and daring to imagine a life beyond her constricted world. Together, she and Hetty risk everything to claim a measure of power and self-determination in a world that attempts to deny them both.

From the glittering parlors of Gilded Age New York to the windswept cliffs of Rhode Island, Peregrine Hill is a novel in the tradition of Edith Wharton and the Bront sisters, about unlikely love affairs and the impossible choices women have always been forced to make.