From the author of the bestselling A Reliable Wife comes a dramatic passionate tale of a
glamorous Southern debutante who marries for money and ultimately suffers for love-a southern
gothic as written by Dominick Dunne. It begins with a house and ends in ashes . . . Diana Cooke
was born with the century and came of age just after World War I. The daughter of Virginia
gentry she knew early that her parents had only one asset besides her famous beauty: their
stately house Saratoga the largest in the commonwealth which has hosted the crème of society
and Hollywood royalty. Though they are land-rich the Cookes do not have the means to sustain
the estate. Without a wealthy husband Diana will lose the mansion that has been the heart and
soul of her family for five generations. The mysterious Captain Copperton is an outsider with
no bloodline but plenty of cash. Seeing the ravishing nineteen-year-old Diana for the first
time he's determined to have her. Diana knows that marrying him would make the Cookes solvent
and ensure that Saratoga will always be theirs. Yet Copperton is cruel as well as vulgar while
she admires his money she cannot abide him. Carrying the weight of Saratoga and generations of
Cookes on her shoulders she ultimately succumbs to duty sacrificing everything including
love. Luckily for Diana fate intervenes. Her union with Copperton is brief and gives her a son
she adores. But when her handsome charming Ashton now grown returns to Saratoga with his
college roommate the real scandal and tragedy begins. Reveling in the secrets mores and
society of twentieth-century genteel Southern life The Dying of the Light is a romance a
melodrama and a cautionary tale told with the grandeur and sweep of an epic Hollywood classic.
