The Quivera Trail is intended as a sequel to the Adelsverein Trilogy, as it picks up in 1875, with Dolph Becker courting and marrying a young Englishwoman, Isobel Lindsay-Groves. Isobel has several problems, the first of them being a domineering and cruelly judgemental mother, and the second, that she has made a dreadful hash of her debut year and failed to marry - marry well, or marry anyone at all. She is plump, socially inept, loves dogs and horses and wishes wistfully for a quiet modest country life. Dolph Becker is the answer to a prayer, for he offers all that ... but the price for escape from a gilded world of privilege and the casual malice of her mother and Society ... is to marry a man she barely knows, and follow him to Texas.
Accompanying Isobel on the journey to her new home in Texas is Jane Goodacre, her personal maid and confidant. Jane, the daughter of a small country shop-keeper, also has ambitions - and talents that she hardly suspects. The limitations and expectations for a young working-class woman in Victorian England weigh very heavily on Jane, although she does not realize that ... until she and her lady mistress arrive in Texas.
