Benefactress

Anna Estcourt has spent her young life as an unwelcome dependent, a beautiful ward trapped in her brother's household, spurning marriage proposals because she'd rather be alone than indebted to a husband. When her eccentric uncle leaves her a German estate, independence finally seems within reach. She arrives at her new home ready to remake herself, throwing open her doors to displaced gentlewomen in what she imagines will be noble benefaction. But the project consumes her in ways she never anticipated: the women are ungrateful, the work is endless, and her fortune begins to slip away even as she gives everything to people who may never appreciate it. Only her neighbor Axel Lohm seems to understand her exhaustion. A warm, funny, unexpectedly poignant novel about what it costs a woman to refuse the roles society offers her, and whether true freedom is ever really possible.