With a flavor and style reminiscent of Victorian writer Jane Austin and a hint of Nancy Drew in the protagonist, author Lynn Austin has fashioned a novel likely to appeal to readers who appreciate a blend of history and fiction.

“A Proper Pursuit” is a coming-of-age tale set in the later 1800s, with the town of Lockport, Ill., in the shadow of Chicago as it basked in the reflection of the 1893 Columbian Exposition.

Twenty-year-old Violet Hayes boards the train at Lockport bound for Chicago with the intention of pursuing her long-lost mother; in the process the search turns inward as she seeks to find herself in the choices that are strewn in her path. In fact, Hayes is pursued, or wooed, by four very different men who represent choices that will direct her future mission in life.

In the “pursuit” of the young woman’s decisions about her life, Austin affords the reader a good look at pressing social issues of the times, specifically justice in the workplace, the suffragette movement, struggles of immigrants and religious evangelization.

The entertaining descriptions drawn of the Exposition and poignant flashbacks to the Great Chicago Fire lend color to the novel, written in a diary-like first-person account.

A three-time winner of the Christy Award which targets outstanding Christian writing, Austin’s language has just enough flounce and fluff to fit the times—much like the elaborately fashioned ball gowns worn by her heroine—a five-star graduate of Madame Beauchamps finishing school in Rockford, Ill., known to be a hotbed of manners and mores for young women. She describes an elderly aunt: “She has soft, limp hands, like aging goose-down pillows with all the stuffing gone.” And of a young suitor, the author writes, “He smelled good—like the barbershop in Lockport.” Later the young woman on the brink of adulthood admits: “Suitors piled up like cordwood” and “Men flocked to me like crows in a cornfield.”

The likeable Violet Hayes is a grown-up version of “Eloise” living in her own “Walter Mitty” world. Daring to be a woman of the world, she fearlessly boards Mr. Ferris’ Wheel at the fair yet recoils like a sheltered child from the repugnant sights and smells of the slum-like conditions of the city’s gritty side.

“A Proper Pursuit” is gracefully written with an eye toward an audience of mostly women, especially appropriate for a teen audience in search of a love story with a modest amount of mystery and a healthy dose of humor.