Saturday, March 14, 2015, 4:00pm - 6:00pm
Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great American Fortune co-authored by Bill Dedman
• 30 - 40 minute author talk
• Q & A
• Book sales, signing, and refreshments
Empty Mansions is a mystery of wealth and loss — and a secretive heiress named Huguette Clark. Though she owned palatial homes in Santa Barbara and Connecticut and New York, why had she lived for twenty years in a simple hospital room, despite being in excellent health? Empty Mansions unravels the story of her remarkable family, from the father, W.A. Clark, the copper king, founder of Las Vegas, and controversial U.S. senator, to his daughter, the generous artist who held a ticket on the Titanic and was still living in New York City on 9/11. Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter Bill Dedman, who discovered Huguette's story for NBC News, has collaborated with Huguette Clark's cousin, Paul Clark Newell, Jr., one of the few relatives to have conversations with her.
Carefully drawn from interviews with Huguette, her personal papers, and testimony of her inner circle, Empty Mansions has been updated with the outcome of the court battle for her estate. Richly illustrated with more than seventy photographs, Empty Mansions is the story of an eccentric of the highest order, a last jewel of the Gilded Age who lived life on her own terms.
In a story that spans nearly all of American history in three generations, Dedman and Newell tell a fairy tale in reverse: the talented daughter, born into a family of fortune and privilege, who hides herself from the outside world. The authors reveal a complex portrait of the enigmatic Huguette and her intimate circle—including her extravagant father, her publicity-shy mother, her star-crossed sister, her French boyfriend, her nurse who received more than $30 million in gifts, and the relatives fighting to inherit Huguette’s copper fortune.
About Bill Dedman:
Bill Dedman is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American journalist, an investigative reporter for NBC News, and co-author of the No. 1 New York Times bestselling book Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great American Fortune. Dedman uncovered the case of the reclusive copper heiress Huguette Clark in 2010, documenting her life in a series of reports for NBC News. Dedman and Clark's cousin, Paul Clark Newell, Jr., co-wrote the nonfiction Empty Mansions about Clark and her father, the Gilded Age industrialist and senator William A. Clark. In 1989, Dedman received the Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting for The Color of Money, a series of articles in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on racial discrimination by mortgage lenders in middle-income black neighborhoods.
There are two equal co-authors to this book, Bill Dedman and Paul Clark Newell, Jr.
Getaway Ideas: Minutes from I95 or Metro North, come early and walk in the picturesque village of Southport past stately mansions and small quaint boat yards. Then enjoy dinner at your choice of Southport restaurants. Finish your getaway by going to a local cafe.
Location: Pequot Library, 720 Pequot Avenue, Southport, CT
Contact: (203) 259-0346 ext. 15