A Lady of Good Family

From the author of The Beautiful American comes a richly imagined novel about historical figure Beatrix Farrand, one of the first female landscape architects.

Raised among wealth and privilege during America’s fabled Gilded Age, a niece of famous novelist Edith Wharton and a friend to literary great Henry James, Beatrix Farrand is expected to marry, and marry well. But as a young woman traveling through Europe with her mother and aunt, she already knows that gardens are her true passion?planning them, nurturing them, digging deep into their soil, and cultivating their lush greenery.

This highborn woman with unconventional views and a distrust of marriage escapes the dictates of society to become the most celebrated female landscape designer in the country. Despite her association with much-acclaimed men in her field such as Frederick Law Olmsted, the genius behind New York’s Central Park, her path is not easy. How she becomes a woman for whom work and love, the earthly and the mysterious, are held in delicate and satisfying balance is the story of her unique determination to create beauty and serenity while remaining true to herself.

Beatrix’s journey begins at the age of twenty-three in the Borghese Gardens of Rome, where she meets beguiling Amerigo Massimo, an Italian gentleman of sensitivity and charm?a man unlike any she has known before....

Jeanne Mackin is an award-winning author of historical novels, includingThe Beautiful American, The Frenchwoman, The Sweet By and By,Dreams of Empire, Queen's War, and A Woman of Good Family. She lives in the Finger Lakes region of New York with her husband, artist Steve Poleskie.