A Modern Chronicle

A Modern Chronicle follows Honora Leffingwell, a beautiful, ironical young woman born into the fading elegance of transatlantic society and raised between glamour and plain duty. Orphaned after her parents' deaths, she is carried from that world into the steady St. Louis home of her Uncle Tom, a modest bank teller of deep integrity, and Aunt Mary, whose quiet sacrifices and Puritan discipline shape Honora's upbringing. In their affectionate household, amid teasing servants, garden peace, and stories of her charming, elusive father, Honora grows up feeling both cherished and set apart, almost princess-like, yet restless with longing for something larger. As she matures, Honora's imagination turns toward wealth, travel, and distinction, even as she sharpens into a perceptive critic of social vanity and pretension. Her clashes with Aunt Mary expose the novel's central tension between worldly ambition and moral restraint, appearance and character, self-assertion and duty. That conflict deepens when she enters New York society and meets Trixton Brent, whose wit, confidence, and frank admiration draw her into a more complicated emotional world. A comic automobile mishap and a tense drive through Westchester reveal both the absurdities of modern life and the growing attraction between them. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.