In her stunning memoir, Wendy Lawless tells the often heartbreaking tale of her unconventional upbringing with an unstable alcoholic and suicidal mother a real-life Holly Golightly turned Mommie Dearest and the uncommon sense of resilience that allowed her to rise above it all. Don t forget to look out for Wendy s follow-up memoir, "Heart of Glass," coming March 2016 from Gallery Books.
Georgann Rea didn t bake cookies or go to PTA meetings; she wore a mink coat and always had a lit Dunhill plugged into her cigarette holder. She d slept with too many men and a few women, and she didn t like dogs or children. Georgann possessed the icy beauty of a Hitchcock heroine with the cold heart to match.
From living at the Dakota in 1960s Manhattan to London s swinging town houses and beyond, Wendy Lawless and her younger sister navigated day-to-day life as their unstable and fabulously neglectful mother, Georgann, chased her delusions, suffered dramatic breakdowns, and survived suicide attempts. With clear-eyed grace and flashing wit, Lawless portrays the highs and lows of her unhinged upbringing and how she survived her mother s endlessly destructive search for glamour and fulfillment in a searing memoir that reads like a novel (Anne Korkeakivi, "An Unexpected Guest")."