When author Simon Welfare and his wife, Mary, were house hunting in northeastern Scotland, they knew much of the countryside was once owned by Mary's great-grandparents, the Marquess and Marchioness of Aberdeen. What they didn't know, however, was how so wealthy and privileged a family could lose such a great fortune— including more than twenty homes and estates throughout Britain and North America. The lingering question prompted Welfare to plot the rise and fall of Johnny and Ishbel Gordon's family through the homes acquired, renovated, built, and lost. Fortune's Many Houses is an intriguing in-depth look at one illustrious family, and offers a glimpse of Victorian high society, with all of its demands, advantages, and pitfalls.