Two young sisters step into a world of chandeliers and coded silences, and nothing will look the same again. Agnes Atheling has published a novel, a modest triumph that propels her and her beautiful sister Marion from modest circumstances into the glittering (and deeply absurd) realm of Victorian high society. At the Willows, a picturesque riverside villa where social performance is paramount, the sisters find themselves caught between genuine connection and desperate self-presentation. Agnes watches with a writer's acute eye while Marion navigates the perilous waters of romance; both measure their own worth against young women who seem to have been born knowing the rules they are still learning. Their father, meanwhile, faces a challenge to his unexpected inheritance from a shadowy figure named Lord Winterbourne, adding a layer of family mystery to the social comedy. Margaret Oliphant drew on her own experience as a young female author for this layered portrait of ambition, belonging, and the particular loneliness of being new to a world that was not built for you.
