New from Tam May: Pathfinding Women
Pathfinding Women,
Book 3 in the Waxwood series, a family saga of the Golden
Age in San Francisco CA
Tam May
Historical fiction
$3.99 ebook
$12.99 paperback
Buy on Amazon Barnes and Noble
Read the interview with Tam here
About the Book
There are paths in life we have no choice but to follow.
At the close of the nineteenth century, Vivian Alderdice is twenty-six, unmarried, and has no prospective suitors. Now the heiress of the Alderdice fortune, she has yet to fulfill her duty to her family and to society: to marry well and produce heirs.
Her brother’s tragic plight the year before left her and her mother on shaky ground with the San Francisco blue bloods of Nob Hill, and the only way they can re-establish their social position is to win the heart of Monte Leblanc, a wealthy Canadian in search of a wife and looking to become a member of the exclusive Washington Street society.
But a young man on the train tells Vivian things about her grandmother that shake her to the core. Even as she is pursued by the debonair Monte Leblanc, Vivian can’t avoid ghosts from the past who send her on a journey she is reluctant to take.
My review
The third book in the series is my favorite so far. Having fallen into the rhythm of this era and family, I look forward to following Vivian Alderdice learn more about the secrets of her fascinating grandmother. Penelope left a trail almost like breadcrumbs, and after her death waited to see if her clever grandchildren could figure it and not suffer the fate of her gilded cage.
This series is for those who love the era of gentile literature, the Jane Austen and Little Women-type stories of family saga, of noblesse oblige and grasping for status just before the rise of the middle class in America. The Alderdices are a “made” family, only third-generation of wealth and class, to which Vivian’s mother is desperate to cling despite the disappointment of her children’s decisions, and the previous summer and loss of son Jake. The widowed Vivian is set up one summer to marry a man nearly twice her age in order to fulfill her duty and produce Alderdice heirs. Vivian, however, is consumed by the mystery introduced in the first book when her grandmother’s friend Bertha shows up at Penelope’s funeral and suggests there was more to Penelope than her granddaughter knew, or her daughter would admit.
As the summer plays out, Vivian is torn in several directions, searching for clues which involves a former Pinkerton detective, rising women’s suffrage, and a brief appearance of a monster from Vivian’s past. Couched within an eager courtship and the plight of single women striving to be independent, Vivian is at last learning not only who she is, but who she can become.
While these stories are in a series and build upon each other, May deftly weaves a pattern that can be easily picked up at any point. I look forward to the fourth book.
About the Author
Tam May started writing when she was fourteen, and writing
became her voice. She loves history and wants readers to love it too, so she
writes historical fiction that lives and breathes a world of the past. She fell
in love with San Francisco and its rich history when she learned about its
resilience and rebirth after the 1906 earthquake and fire during a walking
tour. She grew up in the United States and earned a B.A. and M.A in English.
She worked as an English college instructor (where she managed to interest a
class full of wary freshmen in Henry James' fiction) and EFL teacher (using
literature to teach English to business professionals) before she became a
full-time writer.
