An American Princess: The Many Lives of Allene Tew

By Annejet van der Zijl

Book Overview

A Wall Street Journal and Amazon Charts bestseller.

Two-time Man Booker Prize winner Hilary Mantel names An American Princess as one of her favorite books of the year: "light and gracefully written, it dances through a century of history..." (The Guardian)

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. Never once did she look back.

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 ch?teaus 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.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1542049741
• ISBN13: 9781542049740
• Release Date: October 2018
• Publisher: Amazon Crossing
• Length: 234 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.5" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

It's Like a History Paper; Not a Novel

The author is good at describing, but if you think you're getting an actual story about Aileen Tew told from her point of view, her thoughts and her conversations, you are NOT. This book is written in 3rd person objective with the author as an outside observer, like a history thesis, who is telling us American history during period of her life and her family's interaction with that history and what happens to all the husbands, kids in the course of that history. It's a history report. It is boring. Reading it is like eating shredded wheat without milk. I read and/or skimmed text up to when she was about to marry the German Prince and decided I was done torturing myself making myself read it. (It was a book club choice.) I don't recommend it unless you're really super keen on late 1900/early 20th century US history and the beginnings of American mega-millionaires. Since it's more like a thesis history paper, it didn't really draw me into the "story" and I didn't care about the character.