A Well-Behaved Woman

Alva 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. Ignored by New York's old-money circles and determined to win respect, she designed and built nine mansions, hosted grand balls, and arranged for her daughter to marry a duke. But Alva also defied convention for women of her time, asserting power within her marriage and becoming a leader in the women's suffrage movement.

With a nod to Jane Austen and Edith Wharton, 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.

Outspoken. Brave. Brilliant. Fierce. Good behaviour will only get a woman so far.

Endorsements

'This is a wonderful book! Fowler's portrait is so nuanced, so complicated by context, and so informed by her own capacious generosity that we can't help being drawn in' — Karen Joy Fowler, author of We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves

'Not just breathtakingly alive, but dazzlingly and profoundly timely. A must-read masterpiece.' — Caroline Leavitt, New York Times bestselling author of Pictures of You