Clover Adams: A Gilded and Heartbreaking Life by Natalie Dykstra

This is one of those rare novelesque biographies than can change the way one thinks about a whole country, a whole century, and certainly one city: Washington DC. Out of five stars I give six, lit up in flashing neon, to Natalie Dysktra's beautifully researched Clover Adams.

Definitely on my top 10 list for 2012.

P.S. View Clover Adams' photo album at the Massachusetts Historical Society website.