The High Price of Celebrity and Beauty

THE FORTUNE HUNTER
Daisy Goodwin
St. Martin's Press
July 2014

The Fortune Hunter tells a story set in Victorian England based on actual characters and events. Charlotte Baird is a very wealthy young heiress, Bay Middleton a well-known cavalry officer and horseman and the beautiful Empress Elizabeth of Austria. Elizabeth is an accomplished horsewoman and has come to England to hunt and to escape the stultifying Austrian court and her equally stifling marriage to the dutiful Franz-Joseph. The lives of the three collide when Bay is assigned to be her "pilot" while hunting by his commander. He is to guide her on unfamiliar terrain and protect her from injury. Both are reckless riders and feel an immediate attraction. The problem is that Bay has an informal engagement to Charlotte.

Beautifully written, The Fortune Hunter is rich in historical detail and paints a picture of a bygone era. The parallels between Princess Diana of England and Empress Elizabeth are obvious; both were totally unprepared for the constraints of royal life and hounded by a public unable to get enough of news about them. Even though Elizabeth hated the attention and refused to be photographed after around the age of thirty, she was obsessed with her appearance. Her beauty rituals are bizarre in the extreme. Charlotte, on the other hand, is not a beauty but makes up for the lack in spirit and charm. Unlike most young women of her social standing, Charlotte is an accomplished photographer and is not particularly interested in marriage. Until she meets Bay, that is. 

The Fortune Hunter has exciting descriptions of foxhunting and steeplechasing. Even though I deplore foxhunting and blood sport in general, I found both engrossing. One gets a clear sense of the danger involved in galloping and jumping a horse over rough terrain and the skills required. At times, Goodwin's dialogue among the rich and leisured is hilarious. The British upper crust had entirely too much time on their hands, wasting whatever talents they might have had in useless pursuits and meaningless gossip.

Goodwin's portrayal of her three main characters in this love triangle is mostly sympathetic but I'm afraid I couldn't connect with Elizabeth or Bay. She was a shallow, selfish, manipulative creature, and Bay was a womanizer whose true love appeared to be his horse, Tipsy. I can't help but feel that Charlotte deserved better. As much as I enjoyed the book I was not enchanted by either Bay or Elizabeth, so that colored my overall opinion. I still have to give it a solid four stars and recommend it to anyone who enjoys well researched and written historical fiction.