Why a Booktrail?
1860s, 1870s: Based on true facts but wrapped up in literary silks and sumptuous settings, this is a novel to sink your historical teeth into. Learn more of the real Sisi, Empress of Austria in 1867 and Bay Middleton.
The Fortune Hunter
What you need to know before your trail
The Fortune Hunter is the compelling tale of how one man man can love two women in very different ways. And how he almost loses everything.
Captain Bay Middleton is one of the finest horse riders that the country has to offer and dreams of winning the Grand National. However he soon falls in love with Charlotte, the sister of a good friend of his. Charlotte is a wealthy women and has a passion for taking photos which only he seems to support.
The two lovers start a relationship but then Bay is asked to act as a guide for the Empress of Austria who has come to England She is a keen horse rider and the two bond over their shared interest.
Bay knows he is getting into a fix he may or may not want to escape until circumstances will decide his fate for him…
Travel Guide
There are many locations in the novel which the real empress Sisi and Bay Middleton would have frequented at the time. There’s a real feel of being deep in the English countryside and horse riding alongside the characters and it’s the description of this and of Charlotte’s love of photography and the balls and dances at the time that really evoked the period.
This is a royal setting so the palaces and the kind of houses that the royals and nobility would have known are evoked – the detail and sumptuous prose draws you into each and every room.
The ball was at its height. It was at the point where the women were rosy from the dancing, but before the moment when coiffures began to slip – carefully curled fringes flattening in the heat
Many of the book’s characters including Elizabeth of Austria and Bay Middleton actually did exist and the author herself says that there was much speculation about their true nature of their relationship and that the truth of it all may never be known.
Sisi in particular is an intriguing character.
Sisi knew that it was hopeless to live up to the fairy-tale princess with stars in her hair of the Winterhalter portrait, an image that sold everything from chocolates to liver salts in Vienna, but she found it impossible not to try.
The Fortune Hunter gives a thrilling account of what could have happened when all of these characters came together one summer…
With the story immediately engaging from the first page, this is a walk, a a trot, a cantor and a full on gallop through an exciting time in English and indeed world history – Sisi was married (unhappily) to Franz Joseph whose nephew and heir Archduke Ferdinand was assassinated – an event which was the trigger for World War one.
As for the period detail – everything from the dresses to the unusual beauty regimes – one in particular you will not forget – is both sumptuous and vivid. The setting jumps off each and every page – you can feel the horses rush past you, the noise as they jump the hedges and the sweat when the riders come back home.
In Austria – The Sisi museum is a must.
www.hofburg-wien.at/en/things-to-know/sisi-museum.html
Booktrailer Review
Susan:
I enjoyed this read as it was a nice mix of fact and fiction. What started out as a love triangle between one man and two very different women turned into a layered story of life of Capt Bay Middleton, life in the royal court and an independent girl Charlotte who is born into money but who loves her camera and her independence even more.
I loved galloping through the fields with Bay and the Empress as I love horses and enjoy reading about how they are looked after, treated and the thrill of the race across open fields and hills.
As Daisy Goodwin herself notes on her website about the real Sisi still an enigma after all this time –
Sisi is now a brand in Vienna, as much a part of the Austrian twinkly confection as waltzes and cream cakes, but her commodification glosses over the unhappiness that accompanied her fame and beauty. The poetry, the relentless quest for physical perfection and the disastrous love affairs have all faded away, leaving only the endlessly potent image of the smiling woman in her crown of stars.
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