Books in the Trilogy:
On That Biddle Boy... "Immediately I was immersed in a story of passion and capital, with the seductive addition of a gigantic fight over a will. Wonderful stuff." "My oh my, you really have a masterpiece there! When do I get back to a normal life?"
On Gussie's Bombshell…
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After ten years of painstaking research, countless hours transcribing hundreds of personal letters and legal documents, author Oliver Biddle has put together an amazing trilogy that chronicles the trust set up for his grandmother Josephine and two sisters, and how it affected– mostly for ill– three generations of its beneficiaries. Through his persistence and the discovery of a file containing hundreds of letters between his grandmother, the trustee, and numerous other family members, Biddle uncovered family secrets dating back to 1873 and beyond. Intrigue, excentricity, romance, divorce, infidelity and dissention abounded amidst the emerging personalities of all the participants. While getting to the truth of what spawned litigation over the inheritance inspired his quest, it also opened the door to meet those fascinating women locked within the massive amounts of correspondence he discovered. While still in their teens all three sisters became extremely wealthy heiresses under the provisions of the trust upon their marriages, Josephine to a thieving imposter, her two sisters to fortune-hunting foreigners. Predictably, two of the marriages end in divorce; their third in a legal separation. While the trilogy of Josephine and successive generations poses unique family situations, most of them are typical of those that seem so prevalent today. Biddle, whose original education plan was to become a writer, became a lawyer after marrying and starting a family. His experience in legal practice provided insight into the litigation concerning the family trust, begun in the early 1940s and lasting into the late 1960s. His curiosity prompted inquiries of the trustees, revealing that all records had been destroyed, yet a file containing a treasure-trove of correspondence surfaced, and by chance he gained access to it. When his mother died, he discovered even more personal correspondence containing revelations that touched him personally. As he continued to ask questions of family members, more documents turned up that made the evolving tale even more incredible. While he knew that he wanted to reconstruct and make sense of this complex family history, Biddle never imagined that it would take a decade to get the "whole story" together. As he and his wife, Mary, worked to create a record from the letters and other legal documents, he realized that their content had tremendous potential for the creation of a mesmerizing family saga and found that by translating many of the events described in these papers, particularly those with humorous content, into live dialogue spoken in the present tense, it brought the dead back to life.
At age 82, Biddle is amazingly active and considering several future writing projects, including another based on correspondence and possibly a crime novel using his own legal background. For now he is content to play tennis four times a week and work with Mary in their 1-acre, prize-winning garden. With eight children between them, they are busy with one remaining fledgling in the nest, Tess, a Jack Russell terrier who, in addition to being a certified therapy dog, competes in agility competitions and is a member on a flyball team. Summaries... The first volume, titled Josephine, sets the groundwork for the complex relationships between Josephine and her daughters. Followed byThat Biddle Boy, where Josephine's legacy continues as life plays out for her daughters, and equally vast, Gussie's Bombshell, ties the three generations together.
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On Josephine... 
In the Spotlight: Author Oliver Biddle 
Along with tireless assistance from his wife, retirement from the practice of law provided Biddle with the time required to research and write this spellbinding trilogy. Biddle's three titles are now available online at 