PRIVILEGE! SEX! RACE! MONEY! The Love Affair That Shocked A Nation
Set in New York and New Rochelle during the volatile years following World War I, Black and White and Read All Over portrays the infamous Rhinelander annulment case where Alice Jones, a live-in maid, becomes the unwilling center of a national obsession. Alice’s marriage to Leonard Rhinelander—wealthy, sheltered, and deeply unprepared for the consequences of loving her—draws intense scrutiny once his family seeks to annul the union by claiming Alice deceived him about her race. What follows is a relentless unraveling: a courtroom trial fueled by tabloid sensationalism, invasive examinations of Alice’s body and past, and a public eager to consume scandal rather than truth. Drawing on letters, diaries, and lived memory, the novel explores the emotional toll and astonishing courage of Alice, her parents, and her siblings as they are forced into the spotlight. Moving between domestic intimacy and public cruelty, the book interrogates the myths of whiteness, the performance of respectability, and the human cost of a society determined to limit love along racial lines.
