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A riveting tale from the author of The Orphanmaster about a wild girl from Nevada who lands in Manhattan's Gilded Age societyJean Zimmerman's new novel tells of the dramatic events that transpire when an alluring, blazingly smart eighteen-year-old girl named Bronwyn, reputedly raised by wolves in the wilds of Nevada, is adopted in 1875 by the Delegates, an outlandishly wealthy Manhattan couple, and taken back East to be civilized and introduced into high society.Bronwyn hits the highly mannered world of Edith Wharton-era Manhattan like a bomb. A series of suitors, both young and old, find her irresistible, but the willful girl's illicit lovers begin to turn up murdered.Zimmerman's tale is narrated by the Delegate's son, a Harvard anatomy student. The tormented, self-dramatizing Hugo Delegate speaks from a prison cell where he is prepared to take the fall for his beloved Savage Girl. This narrative - a love story and a mystery with a powerful sense of fable - is his confession.



About the Author

Jean Zimmerman

I am a New York-based writer and I have made the history of Manhattan a central focus of both my fiction and nonfiction.

My most recent novel is Savage Girl (Viking, 2014) a mystery with a twist of fable about a "feral child" who gets transformed Pygmalion style into a Gilded Age debutante.

My previous books include the historical novel The Orphanmaster, which told the story of a spunky, beautiful heroine and her sensitive yet manly lover who together embark on a quest to solve a series of grisly crimes in 1663 New Amsterdam.

My most recent nonfiction work was Love, Fiercely: A Gilded Age Romance, a portrait of an iconic couple of Gilded Age Manhattan.

An honors graduate of Barnard College, I earned a graduate degree in writing from the Columbia University School of the Arts, published my poetry widely in literary magazines, and received a Writing Fellowship from New York Foundation for the Arts.

I live with my family in Westchester County, New York.



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