The Shuttle

If you're tired of Victorian heroines who are weak-willed, simpleminded, and utterly incapable of looking out for themselves, you simply must make the acquaintance of Bettina Vanderpoel, the refreshingly shrewd, independent, and level-headed protagonist of Frances Hodgson Burnett's novel The Shuttle. In the early twentieth century, America's nouveau riche families began to marry off their daughters to British aristocrats, and many of these matches were doomed before they even began by intractable cultural differences. When Betty sets off across the pond to rescue her sister Rosalie from one such ill-fated match, the novel really kicks into high gear.