That Which Hath Wings: A Novel of the Day

January 1914. A winter wedding. Margot, quick-minded and quietly defiant, becomes the Viscountess Norwater. Francis loves her with an openness she finds both endearing and terrifying. What follows is a precise portrait of young marriage at the close of a world: champagne suppers and garden parties mask deeper terraments as Margot grapples with what society demands of her and what she demands of herself. The prospect of motherhood becomes a battlefield, pitting her hunger for autonomy against duty, desire, and the mounting anxieties of a nation drifting toward catastrophe. Warthreads through every scene like distant thunder, lending urgency to questions that feel impossibly modern even across a century of distance. This is a novel about the private negotiations of love when the rules are written by everyone except the people who must live by them.