Volume Three
Gussie’s Bombshell
is the final volume of a true family saga in three parts that
centers around the devastating effect of the provisions of a
will drawn in 1873 upon the lives of, and relations between,
three generations of beneficiaries over a period of one
hundred years.
Josephine, the first
volume, tells the story of the author’s grandmother, an
enchanting but hopelessly conflicted lady whose unfortunate
marriage at the age of sixteen to a “negligent young fool”
sets the stage for a life comprised of one turbulent family
crisis after another, a life complicated by her grandmother’s
will leaving to Josephine and her two sisters, Gussie and
Nina, a fortune in annual income plus “the use” (but, in the
case of Josephine and Gussie, only for periods of ten years
each!) of her grandmother’s vast collection of jewelry and
silver, by the birth of eight children – three dead upon
arrival, two illegitimate and one a dangerous psychotic – and
by a second marriage to “an exceedingly ugly incubus” that
ends in divorce.
That Biddle Boy From
Philadelphia, The Flying Dutchwoman and The Man With The
Piercing Green Eyes of a Wild Animal, the second
volume, tells the story of Josephine’s two illegitimate
daughters, Dorothy, whose life ends in Paris in the delivery
of a lifeless child, and Olive (the author’s mother), whose
reckless acts of infidelity with her sister’s husband and an
instructor at Harvard lead to an abortion, psychoanalysis in
Switzerland and a second marriage that ends in a tragic and
ironic twist of fate.
Gussie’s
Bombshell,
the third volume, tells the story of Gussies’ bizarre life
from her catastrophic marriage to a German baron to her years
of captivity in Budapest, her petition to Congress to pass an
Act for her sole benefit, her peripatetic life on the West
Coast and the “bombshell” with which she triggers a
quarter-century of litigation over the assets of her
grandmothers’ trust the chief combatants in which are Gussie’s
lover (“a stranger to the blood”),…
Josephine:
"Clap, clap clad!
Stomp, stomp, stomp! Honk! Honk! Flags waving; hats in the
air! A masterpiece! Mind-boggling-the sheer depth and scope of
intellectual effort involved! So interesting. And well
written. And it's a riot!"
-Julia Legier
Josephine
and That Biddle Boy From Philadelphia:
"I recently read
the two-volume page-turner about Josephine and the Biddle
Clan. What a bunch of characters! I much admire your skill and
imagination in starting with a couple of boxes of
correspondence and ending up with an insightful family saga.
Also luck for us readers is the generous display of your sense
of humor."
–Edmund Brunswick
That Biddle Boy
From Philadelphia:
"Your book is gripping! Fascinating and dreadful! Your
rendition of this history is lively and well organized. What a
job of research! Your imagination in creating conversations
and situations is amazing! The book is a real page-turner. The
tale you of your parents is fascinating and tragic- it would
make a great movie!"
– Flora Whitney
Biddle, author of The Whitney Women.
"Immediately I was
immersed in a story of passion and capital, with the seductive
addition of a gigantic fight over a will. Wonderful
stuff."
– Buck
Scott
"My oh my, you
really have a masterpiece there! When do I get back to a
normal life?"
– Thelma Priest
Volume One - "Josephine"
Volume Two -
"That Biddle
Boy"
“It has been years since I thought of the Rule in Shelley's Case. What a felicitous way to immerse oneself with the byways of Orphans Court lore. But my brief perusal of your book offers much more and that wondrous pleasures lie ahead.” 
