Loretta Rothschild’s novel Finding Grace (July 8, St. Martin’s Press) opens at the Ritz in Paris. It’s Christmas season, and this is where her protagonists—Honor Wharton, a best-selling children’s book author, and her handsome financier husband Tom—are spending the holidays with their four-year-old daughter, an annual tradition they carry out from their regular suite, with its Place Vendôme views and a canopy bed held together “with layers of salmon-colored silk, the famous apricot sheets without a single crease.”
The milieu the Whartons inhabit is one of London townhouses with antique French chandeliers hanging in the drawing room and Defenders parked in the driveway. It’s where first dates take place at the River Café and wedding dresses are vintage McQueen, where rare Pomerol vintages are poured at dinner parties and appointments are penciled into monogrammed Smythsons. But if you’re expecting a juicy and voyeuristic 325-page peek into what modern life is like for a Rothschild—the author is married to Nat, the 5th Baron Rothschild and scion of the British branch of the banking dynasty—let us stop you right there.
Finding Grace
“It’s not based on me,” Rothschild says, and she’s right. Get past the first chapter, which ends with a life-altering event that changes the course of the narrative, and you’ll understand. “It’s definitely based on an imaginary world I have created.” The main thing she has in common with Honor, for instance, is that they’re both terrible cooks. But, she concedes, “there are always influences from the outside world that come into my books. Absolutely.”
This is Rothschild’s first novel (she follows in the footsteps of sister-in-law Hannah Rothschild, who has written four), and the book’s plot had been on her mind for a while before she finally put pen to paper. “I think I was always a writer,” she says. “I just didn’t know that having voices in your head would manifest into becoming one. Honor was that voice. She was so insistent I felt compelled to tell this story from her point of view.”
Without spoiling anything, we can say that Finding Grace is, at its core, a love story. It almost reads like a rom-com, with the wit of a Bridget Jones installment wrapped up in a broader exploration of grief—and with plenty of unexpected turns. “I like my reader to be buckled up. I want to pull you in and then surprise you,” Rothschild says. “And take you somewhere else.”
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This story appears in the May 2025 issue of Town & Country. SUBSCRIBE
Leena Kim is Town & Country’s Editor, covering the travel, jewelry, style, arts and culture, education, and weddings beats. She has no priors—she has been at the magazine for 11 years, having started her career at T&C as the assistant to the editor in chief.