The Shadow Queen

Few royal stories have been retold as often as the one in which a king gave up his crown to marry the woman he loved. This novel asks a quieter question about it: who was the woman at the center, and how did she come to be there?

Wallis Simpson begins life in a poor Southern family, until wealthier relatives take her in and she grows up as a socialite. Her days are full of family quarrels and debutante balls, and she and her friends spend them imagining the husbands they will one day have. Like girls all over the world, they also dream about Prince Edward, the heir to the British throne and a future king.

Rebecca Dean invents the early years of this famously controversial woman, following her successes and her heartbreaks. The book traces how a girl from a struggling background became a twice-divorced woman with almost no money, and then someone who won the heart of a king and altered the course of history.

The story moves through high society, royal circles and diplomatic intrigue, and gives readers a closer look at one of the most talked-about women of the twentieth century. It is a novel rather than a biography, so the inner life it offers is imagined.