A Manifest Destiny

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About this book

On a steamer bound for England, Bettina Mowbray watches her fellow passengers for signs that her beauty will open the doors of fashionable society. She is grieving for her mother, yet ambition offers a way to imagine a future beyond that loss. Her engagement to Horace Spotswood, a young diplomat and heir to Lord Hurdly, promises the rank and recognition she has long pictured for herself.

Julia Magruder builds this social romance around the uneasy relationship between affection and worldly success. Bettina recalls her mother’s warning that money and position cannot secure happiness in marriage, even as she weighs the attractions of an English title. The narrative follows her inward arguments as closely as the social arrangements around her.

About the author

Julia Magruder

Julia Magruder (1854–1907) was an American novelist, born in Charlottesville, Virginia, who moved to Washington, D.C. as a small child and lived largely there.