Filled with glamour, mystery, and madness, Archie and Amelie is the true story chronicling a tumultuous love affair in the Gilded Age.
John Armstrong Archie Chanler was an heir to the Astor fortune,
an eccentric, dashing, and handsome millionaire. Amelie Rives, Southern belle
and the goddaughter of Robert E. Lee, was a daring author, a stunning temptress,
and a woman ahead of her time.
Archie and
Amelie seemed made for each other-both were passionate, intense, and driven by emotion-but
the very things that brought them together would soon tear them apart. Their marriage
began with a secret wedding that found its way onto the front page of the New York
Times, to the dismay of Archie’s relatives and Amelie’s many gentleman friends. To
the world, the couple appeared charmed, rich, and famous; they moved in social circles
that included Oscar Wilde, Teddy Roosevelt, and Stanford White. But although their
love was undeniable, they tormented each other, and their private life was troubled
from the start.
They were the F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald of their day-a celebrated
couple too dramatic and unconventional to last-but their tumultuous story has largely
been forgotten. Now, Donna M. Lucey vividly brings to life these extraordinary lovers
and their sweeping, tragic romance.
In the Virginia hunt country just outside
of Charlottesville, where I live, the older people still tell stories of a strange
couple who died some two generations ago. The stories involve ghosts, the mysterious
burning of a church, a murder at a millionaire’s house, a sensational lunacy trial,
and a beautiful, scantily clad young woman prowling her gardens at night as if she
were searching for something or someone-or trying to walk off the effects of the
morphine that was deranging her. I was inclined to dismiss all of this as tall tales
Virginians love to spin out; but when I looked into these yarns I found proof that
they were true… . -Donna M. Lucey on Archie and Amelie
