Historical Fiction Review: The Wharton Plot | Mariah Fredericks

A narrative non-fiction take on Edith Wharton’s time in the Gilded Age of New York, The Wharton Plot focuses on Wharton’s obsession with the murder of a renowned novelist.

About the Book | The Wharton Plot

New York City, 1911. Edith Wharton, almost equally famed for her novels and her sharp tongue, is bone-tired of Manhattan. Finding herself at a crossroads with both her marriage and her writing, she makes the decision to leave America, her publisher, and her loveless marriage.

And then, dashing novelist David Graham Phillips—a writer with often notorious ideas about society and women’s place in it—is shot to death outside the Princeton Club. Edith herself met the man only once, when the two formed a mutual distaste over tea in the Palm Court of the Belmont hotel. When Phillips is killed, Edith’s life takes another turn. His sister is convinced Graham was killed by someone determined to stop the publication of his next book, which promised to uncover secrets that powerful people would rather stayed hidden. Though unconvinced, Edith is curious. What kind of book could push someone to kill?

Inspired by a true story, The Wharton Plot follows Edith Wharton through the fading years of the Gilded Age in a city she once loved so well, telling a taut tale of fame, love, and murder, as she becomes obsessed with solving a crime.

Review | The Wharton Plot

Mariah Fredericks’ new novel, The Wharton Plot, is based on the murder of American novelist David Graham Phillips, who was known for provocative and often inflammatory commentary on social issues. Phillips was shot in 1911 outside of the Princeton Club in New York City. In the novel, Fredericks casts well-known author Edith Wharton as an amateur detective who becomes obsessed with solving the murder.

The story opens as Wharton is meeting with her publisher in a tense conversation about her latest book. Her publisher notices famous author David Graham Phillips passing through the hotel lobby and invites him to join. Phillips, known for his muckraking novels, couldn’t be more different from Edith Wharton, and the two writers instantly despise one another.

The two separate and return to their lives, but it isn’t long before Wharton learns of Phillips’ murder outside of the Princeton Club. The polarizing figure has been shot, and the murderer fled the scene. Over the course of the book, Wharton becomes increasingly obsessed with the mystery of who shot Phillips (and why). She has no trouble believing the man had made plenty of enemies, but she wonders if one of his books may be the source of the motive for his murder.

Leaving her invalid husband, Teddy, behind, Wharton attends Phillips’ funeral and continues looking into the murder. Often accompanied by her lover, Morton Fullerton (whom it is quite clear has other lovers besides her), Wharton uses the case as a distraction from an unhappy marriage. She fixates specifically on Phillips’ upcoming publication, Susan Lenox: Her Rise and Fall, particularly after his sister Carolyn encourages her to advocate for it. Though Wharton doesn’t necessarily like the book, she wonders if it holds the source of truth that led to the author’s murder. After all, “in every novel there is a touch of vengeance,” Wharton muses. But what is the source of the vengeance?

The story follows Wharton as she becomes closer to the inner circle that surrounded Phillips. While she still despises many things about him, she also starts to understand more about the threat Phillips’ works posed to an elite group of people. Who was the person that inspired Susan Lenox, or is one of his other works the source of his murder? Wharton won’t leave the subject alone until she finds out.

“She enjoyed the mania of American newspapers, their cheerful obsession with crime, always announcing horrific events in the boldest and brassiest of terms as if assault and murder were spectacles on par with a baseball game or balloon races.”

This was a compelling mystery, made even more intriguing knowing it was based on a true story. Fredericks let’s her imagination pull in other figures who may have been around at the time, though it is unclear where the true story and fiction merge. Wharton pursues a number of leads, weighing each as she comes to it, and dismissing many. At one point she considers whether her friend and sometimes friendly rival, Henry James, could be behind the murder, though she quickly dismisses it.

The case also serves as a distraction for Wharton as she struggles with her sick husband, Teddy. It’s unclear what is truly wrong with him, but Wharton is unfulfilled in her marriage. At one point she muses that Teddy’s greatest fear is that Edith will leave him, while her greatest fear is that she never will. The mystery serves to give her time to process what to do about her marriage, offering an escape from her marriage and her troubling affair with Morton Fullerton.

The conclusion to the mystery builds off the real-life conclusion (don’t look it up if you don’t want to be spoiled), but also adds some additional theorizing that ties everything together. As with most good narrative non-fiction (or historical fiction strongly based on non-fiction), Fredericks ties together known truths with some creative liberties.

Elegant writing, expert-research, and a voice that captures the sharp wit of the legendary Edith Wharton make this book successful and gratifying for the reader.

Thank you to Minotaur Books for my copy. Opinions are my own.