Becoming Legends: Elsie-Bessie: A Love Story (Book One)

They weren’t supposed to achieve fame, money, power, or independence. Nor were they supposed to share a legendary romantic partnership that spanned decades over two continentsNew York, 1886. The rules were clear. They broke them anyway. In a world built for men, two larger-than-life women of impeccable style and taste set out to build something else entirely. They never let the fact that women couldn’t vote, hold a bank account, or own property stand in their way.Elsie de Wolfe is twenty-seven— passing for twenty-one —and running out of time. She’s a not particularly gifted amateur actress whose future depends on one thing: a strategic marriage. What she lacks in beauty and pedigree, she makes up for with wit, unerring chic, and a spine of steel.Elisabeth “Bessie” Marbury has no intention of marrying at all. Bold, brilliant, and impossible to contain within the narrow confines of New York Society, she is determined to make her own way—creatively, financially, intellectually, and socially.Against the glittering backdrop of Gilded Age New York and Belle Epoque Paris, they buck convention, bet on themselves, make history – and have a ball doing it.When Elsie and Bessie first meet at a reception honoring Queen Lili’uokalani of Hawaii, an unmistakable frisson of electricity passes between them. Soon, friendship turns to love, and together they become legends, inventing the fields of interior decorator and modern theatrical agent.Sharp, stylish, and deliciously subversive, Becoming Legends: Elsie-Bessie is a love story. Like all great human sagas, theirs is rich with feeling, longing, awakening, triumph, heartbreak, jealousy, frenemies, fortunes made and lost, a tabloid murder, and even a throuple. Read more