"Too important to be ignored…A fascinating look at America's obsession with race, pride, and privilege." —Essence

A modern Cinderella must defend her fairy-tale marriage in a scandal that rocked jazz-age America. When Alice Jones, a former domestic, married Leonard Rhinelander in 1924, she became the first black woman to be listed in the Social Register as a member of one of New York's wealthiest families. Once news of the marriage became public, a scandal of race, class, and sex gripped the nation—and forced the couple into an annulment trial.

First published in 2001 and still on course syllabi and book club lists, Love on Trial was the first major study of a New York annulment trial that brought debates about racial identity, class, sexuality, and interracial marriage to a national audience. When Alice Jones and Leonard Rhinelander fell in love in 1921 their romance quietly crossed class and racial lines. When the wayward scion of old money married the daughter of a taxi-cab fleet owner, the news rocked the city and Rhinelander’s family lawyers drew up an annulment suit claiming Alice had pretended to be white, hiding a racially mixed ancestry from her husband. Covered daily in local and national newspapers, their annulment trial pitched modern and Victorian expectations of courtship, sex, and marriage, and challenged jurors and readers to determine if Alice’s black ancestry was obvious or known to Leonard.