A Woman of Substance: A Dynastic Novel of Money and Power, Passion and Revenge by Barbara Taylor Bradford is a 755-page hardcover published in 1979 by Doubleday & Company, Inc. The price-clipped dust jacket is in poor condition, with numerous chips, tears, and discoloration. Inside, the half-cloth cover has minor bumping to the spine. Otherwise, the book is in good condition.
Emma Harte Lowther Ainsley is seventy-eight years old and one of the richest, most powerful women in the world. Self-reliant and ruthless, she uses money as a weapon and adversity as a tool.
In her poverty-stricken youth, Emma exhibited an uncommon amount of initiative and intelligence even as a maidservant on a Yorkshire estate. Pregnant and unwed at fifteen, she fled her shameful situation to seek anonymity in a grimy manufacturing town. Here the cogs of machinery would become wheels of fortune for the enterprising young woman. Her business began as a small food shop of homemade treats and expanded into a major department store. At the age of twenty-five she was a successful businesswoman, and by fifty she was an international corporate power.
Emma's ambition, sacrifice, and fearless optimism had built a financial empire deficient in only one commodity--personal happiness. Between ill-fated romances and discordant marriages she fought death, war, even her own children, plus the haunting memory of her first love. Only two men--one a friend, one a lover--would tear Emma's mind away from the all-absorbing business with which she tried to fill her empty heart. One would be a source of strength throughout her days, the other would produce the most devastating crisis of her long life.
A long and satisfying novel of money, power, and passion with contrasting glimpses of the stark realities of poverty alongside the grandeur and opulence of the English gentry.
ISBN: 0-385-12050-8
