Wanted—a Match Maker

Constance Durant has money, status, and absolutely no intention of marrying anyone she doesn't love. In 1900 New York, this makes her a scandal. Her stepmother views her as a liability: an unmarried woman of means who somehow refuses to chase down every eligible bachelor in the city, thereby blocking the marriage prospects of her half-sisters. But Constance isn't interested in the desperate arithmetic of the marriage market. She'd rather spend her time with Dr. Armstrong, a physician who treats patients no one else will touch, and Swot, a street urchin she encounters in a moment of quiet kindness. What begins as a comedy of manners, skewering the absurd calculations of Gilded Age courtship, deepens into something more tender: a story about what happens when we let class boundaries dissolve and love surprise us. The Christmas gathering at the novel's heart brings these unlikely connections into focus, revealing that the best matches are never the ones we plan.