Infatuation

In 1909, a young woman named Phyllis Ladd navigates the treacherous terrain between childhood and adulthood in the shadow of her mother's death. Growing up in the gilded cage of her father's wealth, a railway president's mansion, she must negotiate the impossible expectations placed upon women of her station: to be both innocent and desirable, autonomous yet obedient. The novel follows Phyllis as she comes of age, forming an intense bond with her father while wrestling with her first encounters with romantic love. When suitors present themselves, a man of the cloth and a military officer, Phyllis must choose not just between men, but between competing visions of herself. What emerges is a quiet, penetrating study of how daughters absorb their fathers' expectations, how grief shapes desire, and how the marriage market reduces women to currency. For readers who savor the psychological subtleties of early feminist fiction, this novel offers a window into the interior life of a woman before she has language for her own confinement.