Romance novels have never been my first love. However, I do love compelling characters and an action filled storyline. Heiress has both, It held my attention from the first page to the last. This historical, romance novel takes place during America’s Gilded Age. Happiness and worth was evaluated by the appearance of opulence and achieving social rank. Two beautiful and wealthy sisters, Esme and Jinx are the daughters of August Price, a powerful newspaper magnate. The daughters are used to receiving everything their hearts desire -the finest of everything. Their living arrangements included the finest clothing, servants, fine dining and social respectability. Esme’s desires turn to pursuing a career in writing for her father’s newspaper instead of the expected role of wife to an eligible man - a man who is wealthy and who is at least, her social equal. She soon learns that her father has expectations for her and do not include a career. As the eldest daughter, she is pledged to marry.

The younger daughter, Jinx, has set her sites on her sister’s fiancée and all the social power and wealth that would come along with such a marriage. She believes that love is a natural occurrence in such a marriage. With shades of the biblical brothers, Jacob and Esau, the younger, Jinx, with the help of her mother, betrays Esme to win the marriage for herself. This sends Esme off to Montana, the untamed frontier, to attempt to find happiness in living her own life and forming her own newspaper empire. She builds her career there but finds she can’t totally leave behind her family and life in New York City. Jinx has won the wealthy man of her dreams along with the glamorous lifestyle that accompanies him but finds that true happiness and true love elude her.

Both women endure emotional and physical trials in finding what is truly important in life and in becoming strong, mature women in their own right.

I thoroughly enjoyed Heiress. It is filled with drama and action. Its well-developed characters endure believable struggles and experience moral growth.

Author, Susan May Warren is a best-selling author of more than thirty novels. She is a winner of the ACRW Carol Award, the RITA Award, and the Inspirational Readers Choice Award. She and her husband were former missionaries to Russia and now live in Minnesota where they are active in their local church. Heiress is Book One in her Daughters of Fortune series.