THE WHARTON PLOT

A Pulitzer Prize–winning author probes the murder of a colleague.

Edith Wharton was no admirer of David Graham Phillips. She found the journalist’s dress affected and his opinions overzealous. But the day after their one and only meeting, the muckraker is shot to death near Gramercy Park, and the novelist’s curiosity is decidedly piqued. She leaves her invalid husband, Teddy, back at the Belmont in care of his valet, and persuades her lover, Morton Fullerton, to accompany her to Phillips’ funeral. After the service, Phillips’ sister, Carolyn Frevert, seeks out Wharton and invites her back to the apartment she shared with her brother. Wharton continues to be intrigued by her glimpse into a social occasion without an Astor or Vanderbilt in sight. Frevert, on the other hand, has a more sharply focused mission. She wants Wharton to advocate for her brother’s novel, Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise, convincing his publisher to release it in its current form. Wharton finds Lenox as overheated as its author, but the more she reads, the more sympathetic she grows toward Phillips and his circle. She also becomes more sensitive to the dangers an author faces in standing up to the rich and powerful. As her relationship with Teddy becomes more trying, Wharton starts to think about new ways to look at a world where the intrigues of New York’s Four Hundred don’t always get top billing.

Fredericks’ elegantly written narrative gives a lively look at an author way ahead of her time.