The American Duchess by Joan Wolf

The Amer­i­can Duchess by Joan Wolf (1983) is the tale of a pen­ni­less Duke who weds an Amer­i­can heiress. This is my sec­ond time read­ing a Joan Wolf book. Admit­tedly, I’ve col­lected her work for years but never took the time to just pick up another one and read it. Sev­eral read­ers have remarked upon how much they enjoyed this title and I can now add my voice to that cho­rus. It is a good story.

The Bod­mins — William and his 18 year-old daugh­ter Tracy, have left their New Eng­land home to min­gle with the British aris­toc­racy. An Amer­i­can min­is­ter friend of Tracy’s father has invited them to a polit­i­cal party in Lon­don to intro­duce them to the crème de la crème of Eng­lish soci­ety. Lit­tle does Tracy know that her wealthy father has cooked up a scheme to marry her off to a proper Eng­lish gentleman.

Enter Adrian, the Duke of Hast­ings, whose return from France after his father’s death has left his ducal cof­fers empty. Gen­er­a­tions of gam­bling debts has finally taken its toll on the fam­ily finances . So, the Duke must marry for money in order to help him restore his home and main­tain his stand­ing in Eng­lish society.

Tracy has a vastly dif­fer­ent view of the Eng­lish com­pared to that of her father. While he finds Eng­lish life and liv­ing admirable, Tracy on the other hand finds the class con­scious aris­toc­racy con­temptible. She has more respect for peo­ple who work hard to earn their for­tunes ver­sus those who live off of x,y and z-generations of fam­ily wealth and class stand­ing. How­ever, when she meets Adrian, the Duke of Hast­ings, he charms her despite her mis­giv­ings. Later on, dur­ing their stay in Lon­don, Tracy over­hears dis­turb­ing news that forces her to wipe away her fears and doubts and thus she becomes the Duchess of Hastings.

As the title sug­gests, the story is mostly seen through the eyes of Tracy, who has now become an Amer­i­can Duchess; some por­tion of the story is told from Adrian’s POV, too. The author focuses much atten­tion on the mar­riage and the chal­lenges the cou­ple is faced with in regards to their vastly dif­fer­ent back­grounds and polit­i­cal views — espe­cially since Amer­ica has closed off trad­ing with the British among other things. Any­time there is a polit­i­cal rift between Amer­ica and Britain, this seems to put an addi­tional strain on the mar­riage. Then there is the gen­tle­man that Tracy left behind in Salem who comes call­ing. A self-made mil­lion­aire like her father, Adam Lan­caster sails to Lon­don to visit with Tracy and to also cause mis­chief for the newly mar­ried couple.

The author spends much time explor­ing the weak­nesses of this mar­riage. For starters, both are rel­a­tive strangers to each other when they are first mar­ried. There are secrets that they both hold regret­fully close to their sleeves out of fear of rejec­tion or hurt. Both Tracy and Adrian have doubts about each other that they’ve never voiced aloud. She is wor­ried that he mar­ried her only for money and he fears that her mar­riage to him was a result of her want­ing to please her father. Faced with these chal­lenges and more, the reader under­stands clearly that these two peo­ple — no mat­ter how they started off — have come to love each other very much.

The Amer­i­can Duchess is a sim­ply told love story. There really aren’t that many mis­un­der­stand­ings or super­fi­cial con­trivances. It’s just a story about a mar­riage between a noble­man and a low­born heiress. I didn’t expect this book to focus so much on pol­i­tics but it was a nice sur­prise. Espe­cially con­sid­er­ing the fact that Adrian is a British diplo­mat who is often beset with the task of smooth­ing things over for the sake of his coun­try and his marriage.

To wrap this up, this is a nice story but it is not a keeper for me. Such sto­ries as these often are only a blip in the mem­ory but they are remem­bered with fond­ness. I am glad to have read The Amer­i­can Duchess and hope to read more of Ms. Wolf’s regen­cies. If there are titles you’ve read and would like to sug­gest, please drop me a com­ment. My grade for this story is a B. The Amer­i­can Duchess is avail­able as a non secure ebook and it is OOP in paper form. I must also men­tion that in the ebook ver­sion there were more than a few errors in punc­tu­a­tion and spelling.

*****

This review is apart of the TBR Day 2008 Chal­lenge that my fel­low read­ers and I are par­tic­i­pat­ing in until Decem­ber 2008. I am late with my review because I didn’t write it until early this morn­ing. Any­way, please visit the other par­tic­i­pants of this chal­lenge and thank you all for participating!