She hopes to gain respectability, but those hopes are dashed when Abe turns out to have a violent streak. Then she falls in love with a jeweler's son, Abe Rothschild, and they get married. Determined to earn a living and get her daughter back, Annie runs away from the convent and ends up in a "joy house" (aka brothel) in Watertown, where she finds support along with, surprisingly, strength and dignity in her new role as sought-after demi-mondaine Bessie.
She accepts her fate, believing it temporary, but after the nuns spirit her baby daughter away, she is inconsolable.
To spare her family shame, she is sent to a convent in Buffalo. In 1866, 16-year-old Annie Moore, the narrator of Hadlock's arresting debut, falls in love and gets pregnant in Canton, N.Y. This affecting tale of a 19th-century American woman struggling to prove her worth other than as a marriage prospect leaves a lasting impression.” “Drawing on a true story, Hadlock uses authentic period detail and well-drawn characters to pull readers into Annie/Bessie’s precarious journey toward redemption, which comes to an unexpected ending. Inspired by a true story and set amid the burgeoning women’s rights movement, The Lives of Diamond Bessie is a haunting tale of betrayal and redemption that explores whether seeking revenge is worth the price you might pay.
But Bessie doesn’t let her story end there. She’s proven wrong when she suffers the ultimate betrayal at the hands of the man she thought would be her salvation. With her marriage, she believes her dream of returning to proper society has finally come true.
But few rights or opportunities are available to a woman in the 1860s, and after failing to find a respectable job, Annie resorts to prostitution in order to survive.Īs a highly sought-after demi-mondaine, Annie-now Bessie-garners many expensive gifts from her admirers, and eventually meets and marries the son of a wealthy jeweler. When the nuns take her baby, Annie escapes, determined to find a way to be reunited with her daughter. Pregnant out of wedlock, sixteen-year-old Annie Moore is sent to live at a convent for fallen women. Diamonds aren’t always a girl’s best friend.
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