Bellosguardo — Marjorie May

Enter an opulent world that no longer exists. Stretching from Europe to North Africa to the Hawaiian Islands, Bellosguardo: The Lives of Anna & Huguette Clark is a novel of a remarkable American family from the nineteenth through the twenty-first centuries. Enabled by one of the richest men of the Gilded Age, the mother-daughter duo lived according to the values and traditions of Old Money, pursuing luxurious privacy and personal fulfillment in the arts. Experience Anna as she utterly transforms from an indigent teenager in Butte, Montana to a cultured wife of a senator in Belle-Epoque Paris. Adorned with haute couture and Cartier, Anna would meet presidents and attend George V's coronation. Self-taught, Anna's vision and taste commissioned the exquisite American chateau Bellosguardo during the depths of the Depression, and funded the Stradivari for the famed Paganini Quartet. Discover Huguette's private world. Beginning life as an intrepid polyglot coddled in a privileged Gilded Age childhood stressing refinement, world travel, and the Beaux Arts, as an adult, Huguette pursued personal passions and unrequited love. Comprehend the inexorable forces--tragic, early death, an almost billion-dollar inheritance, a humilitating public divorce, covetous family, two world wars, FBI investigation, and an intrusive American media--which perhaps combined to cause Huguette's societal retreat and reclusivity.