Giddy sugarplum or calculating bitch? Mozart's many biographers (from Schenk to Hildesheimer to Solomon) show little love for his Constanze.
Mozart's wife aroused strong feelings among her contemporaries, too. Her in-laws despised her. Mozart's Viennese friends, as much as forty years after his death, remained eager to gossip about her. Nonetheless, Mozart's personal letters attest both to his affection for Constanze and to their powerful sexual bond.
She bore six children (four died in infancy), while presiding over the unsteady domestic establishment of the world's first superstar. She shared his slide into the fast, loose fringes of the Viennese musical world. Maturing from child, to wife, to hard-headed widow, Constanze paid her husband's debts, provided for their children, and relentlessly marketed and mythologized her brilliant husband.
Why, then, did she never mark her illustrious husband's grave?
Derived from original sources, particularly Emily Anderson's translation of the MOZART FAMILY LETTERS and O. E. Deutsch's exhaustive documentary biography, MOZART'S WIFE is my search for the answer.
~ Juliet Waldron
Her father was Iroquois, her mother a Dutch runaway -- which world will welcome Genesee VanCortlant? The love of a bright young soldier pulls Jenny toward the world of her mother, but the brutal frontier war of the American Revolution may demand that she put him -- and love -- away forever.
"A prize winning, well researched novel that takes the reader on a fascinating journey back in time." -- M. J. Rose, Author of "In Fidelity" & "Lip Service"
"Based on original sources, including family letters and scholarly biographies, Mozart's Wife is a fascinating work of historical fiction, an entertaining and sometimes erotic look at a remarkable woman who earned the lifelong love of one of history's most remarkable men.-- Gregory Harris, BookPage
"Mozart's Wife is a literary treat for history and music lovers alike."
-- Scribe's World
"I would highly recommend this novel to lovers of music, lovers of history, and just plain lovers." -- Knowbetter.com
ebook review
EPPIE WINNER BEST HISTORICAL - 2003
Angelica, a rebel heiress, is trapped in New York City, now occupied by the British Army. A redcoat officer she despises wants to make the beautiful heiress his wife—so badly he carries her off by force. Rescued from certain dishonor by handsome Jack Carter, a mysterious man she has met only once before, Angelica has no other choice than to flee with him, up the Hudson to her northern home. The Revolutionary War is in full swing in every part of the valley, and their way is full of deadly peril.
The villainous officer is in hot pursuit. Can Angelica trust her life and her honor to Jack, whom she hardly knows? Or is daring Jack Carter just another gentleman schemer with designs upon her Independent Heart?
