Women of Privilege: 100 years of Love and Loss in a Family of the Hudson River Valley by Susan Gillotti

Sometimes houses and past speak for us. It happened also to the author of Women of Privilege: 100 years of Love and Loss in a Family of the Hudson River Valley published by Academia Chicago Publishers.
Susan Gillotti in fact, thanks to diaries, letters and journals discovered in the old house of Grasmere in the Hudson River Valley the buen retiro for this rich New York's family, and its women, was in grade to reconstruct a hundred years of life.
Although this one is a story of women, the character I loved the most the one of a man: Ernest Crosby, married with Fanny Schieffelin (the lady in the cover); he was a complete real fighter; being a lawyer, he fought for the rights of poor people and workers, defending, where possible, the less fortunate ones.
He helped Italians under paid living in New York City, participating at their meetings; we mustn't never forget the humiliations that immigrants suffered when they emigrated completely unprepared, without sufficient culture, poor at the experience of the New World;  Ernest fought also against juvenile job; the family of Fanny was embarrassed by the love for poor people experienced by this young man; they had plenty of expectations on him. They tried all their best for changing the mind of Ernest. The story was "embarrassing" for all the Schieffelin, considering also their social status and the perspectives opened to a guy like Ernest.
Defending the poor didn't exist.
Ernest so, was "sent" in Egypt, hoping that in that exotic place he would have distracted his mind from the causes of poverty. Wrong: he found out other oppresses and ways for helping them as well.
Not only: Ernest, devoted to the cause of poverty, was shocked by the conditions experienced by people told in the books by Tolstoy; he didn't hesitate and wrote to Tolstoy. This one became a long-term correspondence with the visit of Ernest later in Russia. Later, once returned to the USA, Ernest invited to Grasmere all the best intellectuals of that period, keeping scandalized Fanny's family.

I love the warm and familiar atmosphere used by Susan Gillotti for telling old anecdotes of her family and women. If you love family's stories as I do this book is for you!

Highly recommended.

I thank Eurospan for the physical copy of this book.

Anna Maria Polidori