In the Belmont Mansion series, A BEAUTY SO RARE
blends fact and fiction to recreate a place and time for our
delectation. Eleanor Braddock has seen dreadful sights as a
nurse in the Confederate Army field hospital in Tennessee.
After the war, she's still single at twenty-nine and caring
for her unreliable father, whose law firm has been obliged
to close.
Marcus Geoffrey, working in Nashville, is hiding his
origins as a member of the royal family of Austria. European
principalities are undergoing attack from republicans,
anarchists and sabre-rattling nations. Marcus is far more
interested in botanical specimens and A local lady, Mrs
Adelicia Acklen Cheatham, owns a fine mansion with
glasshouses. Here Eleanor meets Marcus who is engaged with
grafting experiments. Eleanor's home has had to be sold to
pay debts, so she's come to live with her aunt Adelicia.
Neither Marcus nor Adelicia know what to make of her.
Eleanor intends to take a job as a cook, start her own
business, and she thinks it can't be long before women are
given the vote. Servants cook, not well-raised young ladies.
I enjoyed the descriptions of Belmont and of Adelicia. A
shortage of eligible men and a tendency for Southerners to
wear mourning after the war has removed any chance of gaiety
from the lives of young women. Eleanor has been making the
best of matters. The contrast between her experiences and
the frivolity of wealthy ladies' lives is well described.
Marcus, an architect whose real surname is Gottfried, is a
typically obsessed botanist of his day, preoccupied with
developing a blight-resistant strain of potato to prevent
famine. We also meet various refugees from the European
turmoil. There is so much going on that A BEAUTY SO RARE is
not your typical historical romance; not a heaving bosom in
sight.
I had a great time reading A BEAUTY SO RARE, with sparkling
characters and conversations, lots to learn and a depth of
historical research. Marcus and Eleanor make a fine couple
as they grow on each other. Tamera Alexander has my
admiration for creating this portrait of a bygone time, its
people, and romance.
A gripping love story set against the backdrop of a stunning antebellum mansion Pink was not what Eleanor Braddock ordered, but maybe it would soften the tempered steel of a woman who came through a war--and still had one to fight. Eleanor Braddock--plain, practical, no stunning Southern beauty--knows she will never marry. But with a dying soldier's last whisper, she believes her life can still have meaning and determines to find his widow. Impoverished and struggling to care for her ailing father, Eleanor arrives at Belmont Mansion, home of her aunt, Adelicia Acklen, the richest woman in America--and possibly the most demanding, as well. Adelicia insists on finding her niece a husband, but a simple act of kindness leads Eleanor down a far different path--building a home for destitute widows and fatherless children from the Civil War. While Eleanor knows her own heart, she also knows her aunt will never approve of this endeavor. Archduke Marcus Gottfried has come to Nashville from Austria in search of a life he determines, instead of one determined for him. Hiding his royal heritage, Marcus longs to combine his passion for nature with his expertise in architecture, but his plans to incorporate natural beauty into the design of the widows' and children's home run contrary to Eleanor's wishes. As work on the home draws them closer together, Marcus and Eleanor find common ground--and a love neither of them expects. But Marcus is not the man Adelicia has chosen for Eleanor, and even if he were, someone who knows his secrets is about to reveal them all.
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