The Gilded Frame
Author Peter Gilbertson grew up in the Somerset Hills in the shadow of Bernardsville’s “Mine Mountain.” He and his friends often rode their bikes up and over the mountain to Mendham and back, oblivious to, and uncaring of, the magnificence that was hidden all around them behind stone walls and vast lawns.
It wasn’t until his college days, while volunteering as a docent for the first Mansion in May charity fundraiser held at the original Upton Pyne mansion, that Gilbertson first came to appreciate the magical world that once existed in the Somerset Hills. He became enthralled, and over the succeeding decades tried to learn as much about the Bernardsville Mountain Colony as he could.
A graduate of The Pingry School, Dickinson College, and Boston University School of Law, Gilbertson is now retired and lives outside Columbus, Ohio, with his wife, Maggie, and their two dogs, Tucker T. and Cody B.
The Gilded Frame—Gilbertson’s first book—is a historical mystery set in New Jersey’s Bernardsville Mountain Colony where wealthy, famous, and powerful New Yorkers established country estates around the turn of the twentieth century. The story opens at a 1985 dinner party with Jackie Onassis, then reaches back in time to 1912 and a mysterious death.
Meticulously researched, Gilbertson has woven a complex mystery into a specific time and place peopled with characters who actually existed in the pre-World War I heyday of the Mountain Colony. A true page-turner, The Gilded Frame not only resolves the mystery, but along the way very effectively and believably transports the reader into the cultural landscape of the Somerset Hills of a century ago.
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