His Fortunate Grace
1897
In 1897 San Francisco, Augusta Forbes has inherited more than money. She's inherited a fortune and the weight of what to do with it. A passionate young heiress with radical sympathies, she wants to pour her resources into women's suffrage and socialist causes, to remaking the world in a more just image. But her mother, Virginia Forbes, represents the old guard: proper, cautious, terrified that Augusta will become a laughingstock or worse. The battle lines are drawn within their household, but the real complication arrives in the form of the Duke of Bosworth, a title-heavy Englishman whose charm masks something far more calculating. As Augusta navigates her evolving political consciousness and the treacherous waters of high society, she discovers that wanting to change the world might be easier than escaping its snare. Atherton, writing at the height of her powers, gives us a heroine who refuses to be decorative, and a novel that asks what price freedom truly carries.
