UNEXPECTED FORTUNE

Widower Francis Wallace, 79, is intrigued when his granddaughter, Adelaide Cohn, reveals that she has agreed to date Carson Smith, a law school classmate who has asked her out. Adelaide lives with Francis in his Manhattan apartment while attending law school in the mid-1990s. Although helpful around the household—she does the cooking—Adelaide is also a bit quiet and closed off. Francis learns from Adelaide’s mother, Olivia, that Adelaide’s college boyfriend died in a tragic incident. Carson becomes a regular dinner guest. Francis disparagingly draws a connection between the unctuous Carson and the grasping Morris Townsend character in Henry James’ novel Washington Square and judges him unworthy of Adelaide. She lets Carson leave for a job in San Francisco without assurances of any feelings greater than friendship. Adelaide immerses herself in part-time casework that includes discovering what happened to Mary MacDonalde, who immigrated to the United States from Scotland in 1904, then disappeared in 1913; any proven descendants of MacDonalde stand to inherit a multimillion-dollar fortune. Francis and Adelaide visit the upstate New York area where Mary worked as a governess, which leads to answers about her fate as well as shocking danger that leads to dramatic new life decisions for Francis and Adelaide.

The author has written an engrossing, richly detailed novel that delves into the minds of characters in a way that Francis, a Henry James scholar, might very well term Jamesian. Jane Austen fans will also enjoy this book’s links to her works, with Francis referencing Pride and Prejudice while discussing with Adelaide “the perils of a Jane Bennet–like manner and the importance of displaying one’s affections forthrightly.” Particularly satisfying are Francis’ Emma-like epiphanies about misjudging people, most notably Carson, as when the former professor takes himself to task: “Why had I not recognized that the young man’s high-society pretensions arose not from snobbery or opportunistic cunning but from the fictions we each construct to soothe our souls?” The book is packed with subplots, including Adelaide’s meetings with people claiming to be MacDonalde’s descendants, Adelaide and Francis’ minding a neighbor’s grandson who has cerebral palsy, and a surprising and somewhat out-of-left-field encounter with a serial killer. Yet these are largely effective grace notes within this well-orchestrated novel. Adelaide’s musings about Mary provide a glimpse into the introverted law student’s interior life; ultimately, however, the novel’s many byroads intersect to bring readers to Francis’ realization that he must engage more fully with other people in his life rather than hide in his world of literary analysis. Dzahn captures this evolution beautifully, with the professor noting, “And if the world of fiction was not as bright a star as before, perhaps the cause of that dimming was not loss but an increased luminescence all around.”