Jennie Fields (Crossing Brooklyn Ferry) has concocted an irresistible tale that transforms the upright, starched and intellectual Edith Wharton we think we know into a supine, disheveled and reveling erotic protagonist. Fields's access to Edith's journals and letters give The Age of Desire an authentic air; we see the creator of Lily Bart and Undine Spragg in a whole new way.
Edith Jones married Teddy Wharton, 12 years her senior, when she was 23; it was a disastrous union. Intimate relations with the manic-depressive Teddy were largely nonexistent, and Edith comes to see her husband as a buffoon. Then she meets William Morton Fullerton, an American journalist in Paris and a known womanizer (and a less widely known bisexual). Handsome, charming, he is Edith's intellectual equal. Edith, though in her mid-40s, behaves like a teenage virgin when Morton is around, and of course, the inevitable finally takes place.
As a backdrop to the affair, we have Edith's writerly life and her complicated relationship with her one-time governess, now secretary, Anna Bahlmann. From the age of 12, Edith looked to Anna for instruction and friendship and later, perhaps more than she cares to admit, for a gentle critique of her writing. But Anna is very fond of Teddy and does not approve of Fullerton; she lets Edith know it and is sent away.
Fields beautifully interweaves the story of Anna's devotion, Edith's midlife awakening and life in the Gilded Age among the very wealthy. --Valerie Ryan, Cannon Beach Book Company, Ore.