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Book Summary and Reviews of The Gilded Hour by Sara Donati

The Gilded Hour by Sara Donati

The Gilded Hour

by Sara Donati

  • Readers' Rating (1):
  • Published:
  • Sep 2015, 752 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

A captivating, emotionally gripping novel that proves Sara Donati is an author at the height of her powers.

The international bestselling author of Into the Wilderness makes her highly anticipated return with a remarkable epic about two female doctors in nineteenth-century New York and the transcendent power of courage and love…

The year is 1883, and in New York City, it's a time of dizzying splendor, crushing poverty, and tremendous change. With the gravity-defying Brooklyn Bridge nearly complete and New York in the grips of anti-vice crusader Anthony Comstock, Anna Savard and her cousin Sophie—both graduates of the Woman's Medical School—treat the city's most vulnerable, even if doing so may put everything they've strived for in jeopardy.

Anna's work has placed her in the path of four children who have lost everything, just as she herself once had. Faced with their helplessness, Anna must make an unexpected choice between holding on to the pain of her past and letting love into her life.

For Sophie, an obstetrician and the orphaned daughter of free people of color, helping a desperate young mother forces her to grapple with the oath she took as a doctor—and thrusts her and Anna into the orbit of Anthony Comstock, a dangerous man who considers himself the enemy of everything indecent and of anyone who dares to defy him.

With its vivid depictions of old New York and its enormously appealing characters, The Gilded Hour is a captivating, emotionally gripping novel that proves Sara Donati is an author at the height of her powers.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

Praise for The Gilded Hour:
"Page-turning and atmospheric." - Kirkus Reviews

Praise for the novels of Sara Donati:
"Each time you open a book, you hope to discover a story that will make your spirit of adventure and romance sing. This book delivers on that promise."—Amanda Quick

"A powerful adventure story…Gorgeous, vividly described." - People

"Lushly written…Exemplary historical fiction, boasting a heroine with a real and tangible presence." - Kirkus Reviews

"From page one, the action is non-stop. The more you read, the better it gets." - Tulsa World

This information about The Gilded Hour was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

Reader Reviews

Write your own reviewwrite your own review

CarolT

Pulled me in
Nice job, Sara Donati! You pulled me in and held me, even though I read Where the Light Enters first. As I go back and read your earlier works, I see you were excellent from the beginning. Highly recommended.

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Author Information

Sara Donati Author Biography

Rosina Lippi is a former academic and tenured university professor. Since 2000 she spends her time haunting the intersection where history and storytelling meet, wallowing in 19th century newspapers, magazines, street maps, and academic historical research. And she never gets bored with any of it.

Under the pen name Sara Donati she is the author of the Wilderness series, six historical novels that follow the fortunes of the Bonner family in the vast forests in upstate New York, from about 1792-1825. Her newest novel about the Bonner family is The Gilded Hour. The new series jumps ahead past the destruction of the Civil War to follow Nathaniel and Elizabeth's granddaughters into the twentieth century.

Under her own name Rosina writes contemporary novels (and academic work). The ...

... Full Biography
Author Interview
Link to Sara Donati's Website

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