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Start giftingWhat the Lady Wants
A Novel of Marshall Field and the Gilded Age
Narrator
Kirsten Potter
This audiobook uses AI narration.
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Length
12 hours 2 minutes
Language
English
In late-nineteenth-century Chicago, visionary retail tycoon Marshall Field made his fortune wooing women customers with his famous motto, "Give the lady what she wants." His legendary charm also won the heart of socialite Delia Spencer and led to an infamous love affair.
The night of the Great Fire, as seventeen-year-old Delia watches the flames rise and consume what was the pioneer town of Chicago, she can't imagine how much her life, her city, and her whole world are about to change—nor can she guess that the agent of that change will not simply be the fire but more so the man she meets that night.
Leading the way in rebuilding after the fire, Marshall Field reopens his well-known dry goods store and transforms it into something the world has never seen before: a glamorous palace of a department store. He and his powerhouse coterie—including Potter Palmer and George Pullman—usher in the age of robber barons, the American royalty of their generation.
But behind the opulence, their private lives are riddled with scandal and heartbreak. Delia and Marshall first turn to each other out of loneliness, but as their love deepens, they will stand together despite disgrace and ostracism, through an age of devastation and opportunity, when an adolescent Chicago is transformed into the gleaming White City of Chicago's World's Fair of 1893.
Renée Rosen is the author of Windy City Blues, White Collar Girl, What the Lady Wants, and Dollface, as well as the young adult novel Every Crooked Pot.
Kirsten Potter, who graduated with highest honors from Boston University, has narrated numerous audiobooks and has performed for television and in theaters across the country. She has won several awards, including eleven AudioFile Earphones Awards, and been a three-time finalist for the prestigious Audie Award.
Reviews
“Rosen’s fans know to expect stories filled with atmosphere and history. Here she highlights Chicago, a city that is as much a character as the people who populate the novel. Brimming with details from the Great Fire to the Haymarket Affair, the 1893 World’s Fair, the running of a giant department store, and the larger-than-life characters’ complicated lives, this is an unusual romance—a love triangle that keeps reader attention though tragedy and triumph.”
“What the Lady Wants is as fun and addictive and Chicago-licious as a box of Marshall Field’s Frango Mints. And, sadly, you’ll finish it almost as fast. A delight.”
“What the Lady Wants is a story that opens with the Great Chicago Fire and keeps on smoldering to the end. Rosen’s characters are finely-drawn, and her love triangles are full of subtlety and sincerity. What the lady indeed wants may not be what you assume it to be!”
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