When Consuelo's grandfather died, he was the richest man in America. Her father soon started to spend the family fortune, enthusiastically supported by Consuelo's mother, Alva, who was determined to attain the top of New York society. She was adamant that her daughter should make a grand marriage to the underfunded Duke of Marlborough--it didn't matter that Consuelo loved someone else. However, the story of Consuelo and Alva is not simply one of the emptiness of wealth, of the glamour of the Gilded Age, and of enterprising social ambition. This is an account of how two women struggled to break free from the materialistic world into which they were born, taking up the fight for female equality. Consuelo threw herself into good works, and her social and political campaigns proved an antidote to loneliness. Alva embraced the militant suffragette movement in America, campaigning vehemently for women's rights until she died.--From publisher description.