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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