Gilded Age

The Gilded Age series follows women whose lives cross the rigid boundaries of wealth, class and ethnicity in late nineteenth-century New York and Newport. Masquerade begins with an English heiress and her maid exchanging identities, while An Unlikely Suitor brings an Italian dressmaker into the summer world of Newport mansions, arranged marriages and carefully guarded reputations.

Both novels use clothing, domestic service and social performance to ask who is allowed to reinvent herself. Romance develops alongside questions of honesty, sacrifice and vocation, and Christian faith challenges characters to value people beyond money, ancestry or outward appearance.