The Girls from New York: Paris 1913 A brief moment of innocence

by Richard Savin

1913
Two heiresses, the glitter of Paris, and a world unknowingly sliding towards the abyss of the Great War.

In New York, In the dying years of a patriarchal era, Jane van Rensselaer and Elizabeth Hadlow, struggle to assert their identity, the direction of their future, and the right to choose the men in their lives. Jane and Elizabeth are the daughters of millionaire press barons, Sherman van Rensselaer and Elwood Hadlow; the new money.
Sent on a European tour by their fathers, it is meant to be for their education. The girls have other ideas. Jane is a socialite; she wants to shop in the great stores of Paris and London. Elizabeth is an idealist fighting for women's emancipation. In London she is arrested and thrown into prison for riotous assembly whilst at a meeting of Mrs Pankhurst's suffragettes. The American ambassador is not impressed; he requests the girls leave England. In Paris they have a chance meeting with James Woodville, sole heir of a London banking family, and his friend Rupert Markham, son of General Sir Horley Markham and brother to Cecily. In 1913 the delights of the city are still there to be enjoyed and under its hedonistic veil the four of them form relationships which will collide with the ambitions of their parents.
WW1 explodes and disrupts the plans of everyone. In the aristocratic home of the Markhams, as they lament the shortage of servants, a rift splits Cecily Markham from her parents and her brother Rupert, when she announces she will marry impoverished farmer's son Peter Dorsey. In a clash of class order, her father forbids it. There are threats of committal to an asylum for weak minded women if she does not abandon the idea. Cecily leaves home, taking refuge in the Women's Auxiliary Army Corps and the world of war. Sent to France to become an ambulance driver she sets out to find Dorsey. Her mind is set; if her family will not allow her to marry Dorsey, then she will become his lover.
In the trenches and the skies above, as Rupert, James and Peter fight the war of the old guard, Jane and Elizabeth in New York, manoeuvre towards control of their own lives. Like Cecily Markham, they struggle against their fathers' wishes and their plans for the girls' futures. Stubborn in its ways, the old order tries to resist change and the displacement of ancient class privilege. But the world is moving on. It is the age of the motorcar, the telephone, and the growing rise of women - and of their liberation from the tyranny of the corset.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B09PW8L8FM
• ISBN13: 9798788316772
• Release Date: January 2022
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 404 Pages
• Weight: 0.96 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.0" x 8.0"