During the Gilded Age, a wave of wealthy American heiresses married into the English aristocracy. Focusing on the year 1895, Julie Ferry tells the story of Lady Minnie Paget and Consuelo Yzanga, ambitious marriage brokers who achieved their greatest success when Consuelo Vanderbilt married Charles Spencer-Churchill, 9th Duke of Marlborough. Surveying these ambitious and sometimes mercenary unions, Ferry notes how some were happy matches, while for many, it resulted in loneliness, infidelity, bankruptcy, and divorce.