​Millionaire Housekeeping

In this mid-career novel, written probably around 1970, Ardyth Kennelly  breaks the mold of her earlier and later, mostly Western-themed books. Millionaire Housekeeping is part social satire, skewering the self-absorbed habits and preoccupations of the very rich, and part illustration of how the old ideas about propriety were swept away in the 1960s, when scenes of violence filled movie and television screens and viewers needed ever more sordid spectacles to get their kicks.

Under the guise of writing a handbook for the “elegant conduct” of a “millionaire philanthropist’s” household, Mary—nicknamed Minette by the mistress’s French maid—recounts her rise in one such New York establishment, from a fourteen-year-old dining hall maid in the 1930s to the superintending housekeeper by the 1960s. She’s no Mrs. Hughes of “Downton Abbey,” but fans of that show will see much that is familiar here: Kennelly borrows extensively from the (real) 1903 handbook Millionaire Households and Their Domestic Economy.

Young Mary and the other “under servants” almost never see “the family,” so they can only speculate about what’s really going on with them. What is the mysterious attraction of the ordinary-looking Miss Geraldine, who steals one husband after another—in the same family? How did the butler develop such an unseemly “tan”? Why would Miss Sylvaine starve herself and then gorge, and how fat was Miss Pinella, anyway?

Over the years, Mary has to give up her dream of a “Shangri-La” with the handsome but shallow footman Jack—that is, working in a millionaire household where Monsieur and Madame never come home. Instead, together with the chauffeur and “useful man” Jim, she cultivates a love of learning, as the two educate themselves by reading voraciously through the master’s library.

Still, she has trouble understanding the turbulent new world of the countercultural 1960s. She can’t make head nor tail of her foster son Leland’s successful “art film,” nor of his involvement in the sensational and appalling movie project of the scion of the millionaire family—one that pushes the idea of art to a dangerous extreme and carelessly preys on desperate people.

Millionaire Housekeeping also reminds us of a phenomenon of our own time: the unconscionable chasm between those with outlandish wealth and those just struggling to get by.

Available from online retailers such as Amazon or Barnes & Noble, or order through your local bookstore.

Paperback (183 pp., on sale June 15, 2026): $12.95
ISBN: 978-0-9904320-6-7

E-book (available now): $1.99
ISBN: 978-0-9904320-7-4

You can also ask your local library to purchase a copy.