What the Lady Wants: A Novel of Marshall Field and the
Gilded Age. Renee Rosen. Penguin Group
(USA). November 2014. 448 pp. ISBN#:
9780451466716.
1871
Chicago – Delia Spencer is attending a ball and is fascinated by the men she
sees examining the ladies, that is until she meets Marshall Field. He’s an older man who exhibits all the
graceful, polite but kind traits that attract an impressionable young lady just
stepping out into the finest of society.
Delia is a very intelligent lady when it comes to appreciating the
finest of fashions in clothes, interior decoration in any home, architecture,
art, and more. But all of that comes to
a screeching halt when the same night as the ball the Great Fire of Chicago
breaks out. Delia, her family, and all
of the City of Chicago are doing the best they can to stay ahead of the fire
until they manage to get far from the City. It’s not just a fire – it’s a
disaster that destroys all the major businesses of Delia’s family’s friends and
acquaintances. It will be rebuilt. The
process symbolizes the upcoming life Delia and Marshall will share until 1906.
No,
they will not marry yet for Marshall is married to Nannie, a hypochondriac
woman whose only consolation is her laudanum that makes her even sicker and furiously
jealous as well. For it’s clear that
Marshall and Delia share a spark that will grow into a friendship and later
passionate love, a relationship few spouses ever achieve. Marshall is just as married to his work and
the reader will be fascinated as he rebuilds his lost business, beginning on
the day after the fire. He will argue
with his partner for many years until Delia encourages him to strike out on his
own. She becomes pivotal in helping him
to choose styles and designs for everything in his store, from clothing to
jewelry to home products and more. Later
she will help him create a home away from home for all the ladies who live in
and visit Chicago. These pages are
absolutely riveting and delightful, sure to be loved by anyone with a flair for
beauty in one’s personal appearance or home.
Nothing, I repeat, nothing is left out or repeated; utterly spectacular!
Delia
marries a man who has inherited money but has little else that he loves, other
than his horses that he raises. Arthur
has a penchant that is totally unacceptable in the late 1800s; he and Delia
will come to an agreement but one that is never wholly acceptable to either of
them, one that will bring as much tragedy as it does satisfaction. Marshall is
there for her through many shocking scenes that the reader will never
forget. His debacle with workers
demonstrating and fighting for better pay, rights and other benefits is
depicted with all of its passionate conflict and tension that is most likely
precisely as it was in the famous Haymarket riots.
What the Lady Wants… is superb historical fiction that this
reviewer loved and was so disappointed when it ended. It has everything within it, fashion,
mystery, crime, labor disputes, social refinement and snobbery, family support
and opposition, tragedy and stunning success.
A MUST read and guaranteed to be a best seller! A KEEPER!!! Exquisitely written, Renee Rosen!
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