At Last: A Novel
1883
Mrs. Sutton has built a career on love. In the world of the Southern gentry, she is the woman who knows exactly which young man belongs with which young woman, and she wears her successes like badges of honor. When she turns her attention to her niece Mabel Aylett and the eligible Frederic Chilton, the path seems clear. But nothing is simple when hearts are involved, and Rosa Tazewell a young woman who openly scorns the traditional roles Mrs. Sutton honors threatens to upend every careful calculation. Set in the waning years of the antebellum South, this is a novel that finds humor and tension in the elaborate dance of courtship, where a woman's greatest achievement might be arranging everyone else's future while her own remains stubbornly her own. Harland writes with sharp observation and gentle satire about a world where marriage is strategy, love is strategy, and even the matchmaker cannot always predict the outcome.
