Barbara Weisberg

Strong Passions: A Scandalous Divorce in Old New York (eBook, ePUB)

• Format: ePub

Produktbeschreibung

In 1864, the nation was riveted by a society divorce trial that had everything: cheating, wealth, feuding brothers and lurid details. Weisberg's sensitive examination reconstructs the trial while giving dimension to the real-life people involved.The New York Times Book Review Editors Choice



Shocking revelations of a wife's adultery explode in an incendiary nineteenth-century trial, exposing upper-crust New York society and its secrets.

What could possibly go wrong in a wealthy matriarch's country home when her dilettante son, his restless wife, and his widowed brother live there together? Strong Passions, rooted in the beguiling times of Edith Wharton's old New York, recounts the true story of a tumultuous marriage. In 1862, Mary Strong stunned her husband, Peter, by confessing to a two-year affair with his brother. Peter sued Mary for divorce for adulterythe only grounds in New Yorkbut not before she accused him of forcing her into an abortion and having his own affair with the abortionist. She then kidnapped their young daughter and disappeared.

The divorce trial Strong v. Strong riveted the nation during the final throes and aftermath of the Civil War, offering a shocking glimpse into the private world of New York's powerful and privileged elite. Barbara Weisberg presents the chaotic courtroom and panoply of witnessesgoverness, housekeeper, private detective, sisters-in-law, and many otherswho provided contradictory and often salacious testimony. She then asks us to be the jury, deciding each spouse's guilt and the possibility of a just resolution.

Social history at its most intimate, Strong Passions charts a trial's twists and turns to portray a family and country in turmoil as they faced conflicts over women's changing roles, male custody of children, and men's powerfinancial and otherwiseover wives.

---

Dieser Download kann aus rechtlichen Gründen nur mit Rechnungsadresse in A, D ausgeliefert werden.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: W. W. Norton & Company
• Seitenzahl: 336
• Erscheinungstermin: 20. Februar 2024
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9780393531534
• Artikelnr.: 68314714

Autorenporträt

Barbara Weisberg is a former television producer and the author of Talking to the Dead: Kate and Maggie Fox and the Rise of Spiritualism. She lives with her husband in upstate New York.