Jones’s novels derive much of their richness from her striking capacity to use literary and cultural tropes that may seem outmoded to new ends. Where many of her peers skirt or hint at emotion, she describes it head-on. She enjoys traditional sources of novelistic turmoil: not just love triangles but also orphanhood, separations bridgeable only by mailed correspondence, unrequited and star-crossed love. And like Wharton in Gilded Age Manhattan, Jones makes incisive and thoughtful use of even the tiniest details of socioeconomic status, and she cares very much about each of her characters’ pasts.