STRONG PASSIONS: A Scandalous Divorce in Old New York, by Barbara WeisbergThe touch of a hand from two centuries ago can spark powerful emotions in the present. In Jane Austen’s novel, their chemistry leads to marriage and the elevation of the heroine’s fortunes. But in New York in 1860, a real-life brush of hands “ignited a fiery and forbidden passion” between members of two prominent families. Their romance wrecked a marriage, destroyed the woman’s reputation and resulted in a lurid divorce trial whose salacious details filled pages of the nation’s newspapers. In “Strong Passions,” her riveting reconstruction of a scandal that “rocked genteel society,” Barbara Weisberg reassembles the story with the clear determination to treat both sides equally, and without leering.

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Persons: Barbara Weisberg, “, ”, Jane Austen’s, ” Barbara Weisberg Locations: Old New York, New York