By Theres Anne Fowler

Alva Smith, her southern family destitute after the Civil War, married into one of America’s great Gilded Age dynasties: the newly wealthy but socially shunned Vanderbilts.  In A Well-Behaved Woman, Theres Anne Fowler paints a glittering world of enormous wealth contrasted against deserate poverty, of social ambition and social scorn, of friendship and betrayal, and an unforgettable story of a remarkable woman.  Meet Alva Smith Vanderbilt Belmont, living proof that history is made by those who know the rules–and how to break them.