love and madness in the Gilded Age
Chronicles the tempestuous marriage between John Armstrong Chanler, heir to the Astor fortune, and Am?lie Rives, goddaughter of Robert E. Lee, discussing how the couple scandalized society during the Gilded Age with her morphine addiction and daring novels of female passion, and his eccentric behaviors and profligacy, which led to his being placed by his siblings in an insane asylum from which he escaped after four years.
