In the dying years of a patriarchal era, three women struggle to assert their identity. Jane van Rensselaer and Elizabeth Hadlow in New York, and Cecily Markham in England, are in conflict with their families over the men in their lives, and the direction of their futures.
Jane and Elizabeth are the daughters of millionaire press barons, Sherman van Rensselaer and Elwood Hadlow; the new money. Sent on a European tour by their fathers, it is meant to be for their education. The girls have other ideas. Jane is a socialite; she wants to shop in the great stores of Paris and London. Elizabeth is an idealist fighting for women's emancipation. In London she gets herself thrown into prison for riotous assembly at a meeting of Mrs Pankhurst's suffragettes. The American ambassador is not impressed and requests that the girls leave London. In Paris they have a chance meeting with James Woodville, sole heir of a London banking family, and his friend Rupert, son of General Sir Horley Markham and brother to Cecily. In 1913 the delights of the city are still there to be enjoyed and under its hedonistic veil the four of them form relationships which will collide with the ambitions of their parents.
WW1 explodes and disrupts the plans of everyone. In the aristocratic home of the Markhams, as they lament the shortage of servants, a rift splits Cecily from her parents and her brother Rupert, when she announces she will marry impoverished farmer's son Peter Dorsey. In a clash of class order, her father forbids it. There are threats of committal to an asylum for weak minded women if she does not abandon the idea. Cecily leaves home, taking refuge in the Women's Auxiliary Army Corps and the world of war. Sent to France to become an ambulance driver she sets out to find Dorsey. Her mind is set; if family will not allow her to marry him, then she will become his lover.
In the trenches and the skies above, as Rupert, James and Peter fight the war of the old guard, Jane and Elizabeth in New York, manoeuvre towards control of their own lives. Like Cecily Markham, they struggle against their father's wishes and their plans for the girls' futures. Stubborn in its ways, the old order tries to resist change and the displacement of ancient class privilege. But the world is changing. It is the age of the motorcar, the telephone, and the growing rise of women - and of their liberation from the tyranny of the corset.

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• RomanceHistorical Romance20th Century
• Literature & FictionGenre FictionSagas

• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
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• Print Length: 405 Pages
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