A dramatic, passionate Southern gothic tale of a glamorous debutante who marries for money and suffers for love—perfect for fans of Dominick Dunne.
It begins with a house and ends in ashes . . .
Diana Cooke was “born with the century” and came of age just after World War I. The daughter of Virginia gentry, she knew early that, other than her famous beauty, her parents had only one asset: their stately house, Saratoga. Though they are land-rich, the Cookes do not have the means to sustain the estate. Without a wealthy husband, Diana will lose the mansion that has held her family together for five generations.
The enigmatic Captain Copperton is a stranger in the ranks of Southern aristocracy with no pedigree but plenty of cash. Seeing the ravishing nineteen-year-old Diana for the first time, he’s determined to have her. Diana knows that marrying him would make the Cookes solvent and ensure that Saratoga will always be theirs. Yet Copperton is vulgar as well as cruel; while Diana covets his money, she cannot abide him. Carrying the weight of Saratoga and generations of Cookes on her shoulders, she ultimately succumbs to duty, sacrificing everything, including love.
Luckily for Diana, fate intervenes. Her union with Copperton is brief and gives her a son she adores. But when her handsome, charming Ashton, now grown, returns to Saratoga with his college roommate, the real scandal and tragedy begins . . .
Reveling in the secrets, mores, and society of twentieth-century genteel Southern life, The Dying of the Light is a romance, a melodrama, and a cautionary tale told with the grandeur and sweep of an epic Hollywood classic.
