The Mysterious Life and Scandalous Death of Heiress Huguette Clark
by Meryl Gordon
Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published May 2014
400 pages
Genre: Biography/Memoir
Publication Information
Born in 1906, Huguette Clark grew up in her family's 121-room Beaux Arts mansion in New York and was one of the leading celebrities of her day. Her father William Andrews Clark, was a copper magnate, the second richest man in American, and not above bribing his way into the Senate.
Huguette attended the coronation of King George V. And at twenty-two with a personal fortune of $50 million to her name, she married a Princeton man and childhood friend William MacDonald Gower. Two-years later the couple divorced. After a series of failed romances, Huguette began to withdraw from society--first living with her mother in a kind of Grey Gardens isolation then as a modern-day Miss Havisham, spending her days in a vast apartment overlooking Central Park, eating crackers and watching The Flintstones with only servants for company.
All her money and all her real estate could not protect her in her later life from being manipulated by shady hangers-on and hospitals that were only too happy to admit (and bill) a healthy woman. But what happened to Huguette that turned a vivacious, young socialite into a recluse? And what was her life like inside that gilded, copper cage?
"Insightful and intriguing, Gordon's book offers a rare glimpse into a privileged world-and twisted personal psychology-beyond imagining." - Kirkus
"Readers who salivated over headlines like "Poor Little Rich Girl's Sad Life" (Courier-Mail) and "America's Antisocial Socialite" (Scottish Express) will be left wanting more. Yet this very unwillingness to speculate - Gordon's strict adherence to primary documents and witness interviews - makes for a rigorous, authoritative account of a 20th century enigma." - Publishers Weekly
"An engrossing account for those interested in the lengths that family, professionals, and others will go to appropriate the wealth of a seemingly desolate heiress." - Library Journal
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Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Meryl Gordon is the author of Mrs. Astor Regrets: The Hidden Betrayals of a Family Beyond Approach. She is an award-winning journalist whose articles have appeared in Vanity Fair, the New York Times, and New York Magazine, and the director of Magazine Writing at New York University's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. A native of Rochester, New York, and a graduate of the University of Michigan, she lives on Manhattan's Upper West Side with her husband, Walter Shapiro.
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