Dalliance

"Mary Turner has little use for sacrifice. As the niece of Erastus Corning, the prominent banking and railway magnate, she is accustomed to financial security, society balls, and the flirtatious attention of her many suitors. When she marries the ambitious, though dull, banker Isaac Burch, she secures an upper-class social position at the cost of a loveless relationship. Refusing to settle, Mary soon finds diversion and companionship in a "dalliance" - perhaps adulterous - with Chicago lawyer David Stuart. Her alleged indiscretions result in a very public divorce trial, pitting the domineering husband against the repentant and disgraced wife." "Based on the actual Illinois divorce trial of 1860 that riveted the country with newspaper headlines displaying the personal lives of prominent citizens, Burg's novel probes human motivations and failings within a social climate percolating with the demands of civil and social rights for women. Narrated through Mary's diary entries, Isaac's letters, and the journal of newspaper reporter Thomas Perry, Dalliance transports the reader with researched detail into the material culture of America's mid-nineteenth-century upper-crust society."--BOOK JACKET.