The Maze at Windermere — Gregory Blake Smith

Five eras and a spellbinding cast of characters intersect in Newport, R.I., weaving a tapestry of ambition and desire, and charting a voyage into the maze of the human heart from past to present.

A reckless wager between a tennis pro with a fading career and a drunken party guest -- the stakes are an antique motorcycle and an heiress's diamond necklace -- launches an odyssey that braids together three centuries of love and ambition, aspiration and adversity. A witty and urbane bachelor of the Gilded Age embarks on a high-risk scheme to marry into a fortune; the young writer Henry James, soon to make his mark on the world, turns himself to his craft with harrowing social consequences; an aristocratic British officer during the American Revolution carries on a courtship that leads to murder; and, in Newport's earliest days, a tragically orphaned Quaker girl imagines a way forward for herself and the slave girl she has inherited.

In THE MAZE AT WINDERMERE Gregory Blake Smith weaves these intersecting worlds into a brilliant tapestry, charting a voyage across the ages into the maze of the human heart.