A young couple`s love is threatened by the destructive power of money Nick Lansing & Susy Branch are young, attractive, but impoverished New Yorkers. They are in love & decide to marry, but realise their chances of happiness are slim without the wealth & society that their more privileged friends take for granted. Nick & Susy agree to separate when either encounters a more eligible proposition. However, as they honeymoon in friends` lavish houses, from a villa on Lake Como to a Venetian palace, jealous passions & troubled consciences cause the idyll to crumble. Edith Wharton has perceptively described the choices faced by Nick & Susy; the same dilemma still facing those seduced by the pleasures of society. ` Wharton`s unjustly neglected novel...a luscious, worldly, sensuous read, surely the equal of its most obvious offspring
- Tender is the Night.` BOYD TONKIN, Independent Edith Wharton was born in 1862 in New York, into a rich & socially prominent family. She began to write at an early age, although it was a habit viewed by her family as unsuitable for a woman of her social class. In 1885 she married Edward ` Teddy` Wharton, a Boston banker. They lived a privileged life, but Wharton gradually grew dissatisfied with the roles of wife & society matron. The Whartons moved to Paris in 1907 & divorced in 1913. Edith continued to live in France, her beloved adoptive home, until her death in 1937.