The first generation earned it

The second generation inherited it

The third generation spent it

The fourth generation wanted nothing to do with it.

In the summer of 1895, at the height of the Gilded Age, Newport, Rhode Island was the summer playground of American nobility. Three young and beautiful heiresses from rival families struggle to define their place within the House of Vanderbilt, balancing love, birthright, and responsibility to their respective families with their own hopes and desires. Each has the potential to attain the prize---the mantle of Mrs. Vanderbilt, the “American Queen”.

· Twenty year old Gertrude, daughter of the current “Mrs. Vanderbilt” and Cornelius Vanderbilt II, is torn between her sexuality and her parents’ insistence that she be properly married to a man who will add social status to their ruling branch of the House of Vanderbilt.

· Gertrude’s first cousin Consuelo, daughter of Alva Vanderbilt and William K. Vanderbilt, is being forced into a loveless marriage with England’s Duke of Marlborough. Alva believes that if Consuelo is the first American to become a European Duchess, both she and her branch of the Vanderbilt family will attain status equal to her nemesis, the reigning Mrs. Vanderbilt, and her longtime adversary, the current “Queen” of High Society, Mrs. Caroline Astor.

· Gertrude’s brother Neily Vanderbilt has been in love with Grace, of the House of Astor, since they were teenagers. Several years earlier, as the most sought after debutante, she was secretly engaged to Neily’s older brother, William Vanderbilt the heir apparent who died while studying at Yale. Mrs. Vanderbilt threatens Neily, the next in line that marrying an Astor would mean giving up his birthright, along with the social status and the riches that would make him one of the wealthiest and most powerful men in the world.

As the families’ matriarchs and patriarchs rule and manipulate the lives of their offspring to achieve their own aims, their children will be forced to choose between love and independence or status and wealth. Seen through the eyes of an eighteen year old lady’s maid, and written in the second person, the time-honored stories of these young women, their suitors and lovers, secrets and betrayals, are told through a fictional author who uses alternate history to share their struggles and pain with empathy and insight.