An American Princess
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Average rating4.3
Born to a pioneering family in Upstate New York in the late 1800s, Allene Tew was beautiful, impetuous, and frustrated by the confines of her small hometown. At eighteen, she met Tod Hostetter at a local dance, having no idea that the mercurial charmer she would impulsively wed was heir to one of the wealthiest families in America. But when he died twelve years later, Allene packed her bags for New York City. From the vantage point of the American upper class, Allene embodied the tumultuous Gilded Age. Over the course of four more marriages, she weathered personal tragedies during World War I and the catastrophic financial reversals of the crash of 1929. From the castles and châteaus of Europe, she witnessed the Russian Revolution and became a princess. And from the hopes of a young girl from Jamestown, New York, Allene Tew would become the epitome of both a pursuer and survivor of the American Dream.
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This a log of Allene Tew - aided by newspaper clippings and interviews. The author follows Allene's life through high American society, several marriages, two wars, economic depressions, and across the world as she takes on a male dominated world in pursuit of her dreams.
This reads more like a history lesson than a novel but still manages to be engaging, entertaining, and if you can pay attention, educational. There's a lot in here about the different cultural and social status roles Allen finds herself in, as well as general world history and the effects of the events on a more personal rather than global scale.
The author sums it up well in the Author's Note:
“It's an amazing life story, so full of twists and turns it almost feels like an adventure novel. It can also be read as a brief history of America. And, finally, it is my personal investigation into the questions of how to deal with loss” page 188 Kindle edition
