WILLIAM MORROW
An Imprint of HarperCollins Publishers
Contact: Seale Ballenger, Senior Director of Publicity
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"Uncovers a family history long obscured by secrets and lies…functions well as a window into a
largely vanished social and cultural structure. Heartfelt and accomplished…" Kirkus
THE LOVELIEST WOMAN IN AMERICA
A Tragic Actress, Her Lost Diaries, and Her
Granddaughter's Search for Home
By Bibi Gaston
"The discovery of her grandmother's diaries has taken Gaston on a
journey not only of family and home but also of celebrity, politics,
death, betrayal, and, eventually, understanding and hope. Highly
recommended…" Library Journal
Shortly after her father's death in 2001, Bibi Gaston received a mysterious cardboard box
filled with more than 1,500 pages of a diary that belonged to her grandmother, Rosamond Pinchot,
a woman born into one of the country's most illustrious political families and, for much of the
1920s and 1930s, the toast of Broadway and Hollywood. Dubbed "the loveliest woman in America"
at 23, Rosamond was an acclaimed actress, socialite, and sportswoman. Yet, only ten short years
later her life came to a shocking end by suicide, setting in motion decades of confusion, sibling
rivalry and emotional turmoil for the family she left behind.
In THE LOVELIEST WOMAN IN AMERICA: A Tragic Actress, Her Lost
Diaries, and Her Granddaughter's Search for Home (William Morrow/An Imprint
of HarperCollins Publishers; June 10, 2008; $24.95; Hardcover), Gaston presents a stunning memoir
of her remarkable journey to uncover the truth about her forgotten grandmother, her divided family,
and her enigmatic and adventurous father. A compelling story of wealth, fame, passion, and tragedy,
Gaston's remarkably candid exploration of not only her grandmother's tumultuous life but also of
her own difficult past, presents an unforgettable story of how a family of wealth and prestige hid
behind decades of deeply painful family secrets.
Through the diaries, Gaston pieces together Rosamond's life story and discovers a young
woman whose passion was the stuff of legend: from her love of nature, to her love for two brilliant
but difficult men, to her life in the fast lane of New York's high society. Despite Rosamond's accomplishments
and fame, Gaston had been told virtually nothing about her by her father. Not until
she began to read the diaries did she realize just who Rosamond Pinchot was and what she might
have meant to her family had she lived. "In hundreds of images, her look was timeless," Gaston
writes. "They show her in silhouette against the Manhattan skyline, under Hollywood's fabulous
houses of skylights, fishing in the streams of Pennsylvania, and walking her dog on the Upper East
Side as though it was yesterday. Not only was she a celebrity, she was also a remarkable sportswoman
and equestrian. She had dined with the likes of Dorothy Parker, Sinclair Lewis, and George
Gershwin. So why had no one in my family ever talked about her or shared even a single detail of
her life? Rosamond seemed to have slipped off the edge of the world. There are thousands of
ways of vanishing; a family's silence is one of them."
At only 19 years-old, Rosamond had become the "it girl" of Manhattan after being discovered
aboard a passenger ship by Europe's leading theatrical producer, Max Reinhardt. Starring in the
U.S. and abroad as a nun in the play The Miracle, she gained worldwide fame and fortune and was immersed
in New York's glitz and glamour--rubbing elbows with such luminaries as Elizabeth Arden,
David O. Selznick, and Eleanor Roosevelt. Yet, as Gaston explains, Rosamond always felt a sense of
loneliness, the "Cinderella feeling" that left her uneasy with success. Finding solace in nature, she
wrote frequently of her parent's summer home in Milford, Pennsylvania where she would retreat to
bask alone in the fields and forests of her childhood. "The Cinderella feeling was likely some form
of depression," Gaston writes. "When it took hold, she longed for things to be different from the
way they were, to go someplace, preferably alone, where she wouldn't feel as though people were
watching her. But where she wanted to go and what she longed for, she didn't know."
Gaston also details Rosamond's passionate yet turbulent marriage to William "Big Bill"
Gaston, the black sheep of one of Boston's wealthiest families and father of her two sons, and later,
her stormy affair with Jed Harris, the notoriously belligerent director of numerous Broadway and
Hollywood productions. As Gaston explains, Rosamond's difficulty with men could very well have
been the driving force behind her suicide in January 1938, which, until now, had virtually erased her
very existence from the constellation of family.
THE LOVELIEST WOMAN IN AMERICA is also a poignant account of Gaston's
own life and how she struggled to connect with her father before and after his death. In stories that
traverse a wide landscape—from emerald fields in Austria, to the casbahs of Morocco, to the coastal
islands of Maine and the forests of Pennsylvania—Gaston found parts of herself in the complex
and tragic life of Rosamond and was reminded that her life had also been a search for home and
identity. "Within the first few moments of opening Rosamond's box, I knew that understanding
her life would help me to understand mine," Gaston writes. "I wondered if the diaries might
be the longest suicide note in history. Day by day, I discovered the opposite. Was this indeed my
grandmother? I had thought the only thing she'd ever done was to have committed suicide. I soon
discovered the record of a fascinating life, but every bit as much of a surprise, I recognized myself
in her words."
THE LOVELIEST WOMAN IN AMERICA is both a fascinating glimpse into the
life of one of America's forgotten stars and an emotionally compelling search for understanding and
healing in a divided family.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Bibi Gaston has been a practicing landscape architect for twenty years. She has taught and lectured.
She lives in New York City and Oregon's Columbia River Gorge. She, like her grandmother, has
kept a diary since the age of eight.
THE LOVELIEST WOMAN IN AMERICA: A Tragic Actress, Her
Lost Diaries, and Her Granddaughter's Search for Home
by Bibi Gaston
Price: $26.95
ISBN 9780060857707
On sale June 10, 2008
ADDITIONAL PRAISE FOR THE LOVELIEST WOMAN IN AMERICA
THE LOVELIEST WOMAN IN AMERICA is a story for all women who strive and struggle
to lead meaningful and purposeful lives. In moving prose, the author weaves her grandmother
Rosamond Pinchot's deep connection to nature with that of her own. That connection becomes
the constantly redeeming thread, weaving its way through the generations of a remarkable, passionate
family whose legacy of service to the landscape and the environment are the DNA of today's
conservation efforts."
— Sara Cedar Miller, Vice President, Central Park Historian and Park Photographer
"…a fascinating memoir... Her writing is deft and sure. It plumbs the stuff of life in a way that is, in
turn, poetic, wry, humorous and, above all, spoken with the voice of truth and compassion.... As a
landscape architect, Bibi Gaston knows the topography of the earth. With "The Loveliest Woman
in America," she gives readers the topography of the heart of a family, and in it we find pieces of
ourselves." — Bangor Daily News
"Bibi Gaston has written a fascinating memoir that travels through three generations of an American
family from a famous actress and beauty in the early part of the 20th century to her granddaughter
in the early 21st century. It is a captivating story of these 2 women and the man they shareson
to one and father to the other. Bibi's voyage of discovery will enlighten and uplift you."— Ron
McLarty, Author of THE MEMORY OF RUNNING and TRAVELER
"One of the more intriguing footnotes in American theatrical lore has always been the mysterious
suicide in 1938 of ' the loveliest woman in America', Rosamund Pinchot, during the out of town
tryout of - not O'Neill, not Strindberg - but Thornton Wilder's 'Our Town'. Who was she? What
were the circumstances of her death? Her granddaughter, Bibi Gaston, came into possession of
Pinchot's diaries a few years ago and went on her own detective hunt. Surprise! She comes up with
a beautifully written, three generational saga worthy of the Edith Wharton of 'House of Mirth', 'A
Lost Lady' and 'My Mortal Enemy'.
— John Guare, playwright Six Degrees of Separation
THE LOVELIEST WOMAN IN AMERICA is about a granddaughter's search through
familial silence for the grandmother, a beautiful and troubled actress, who committed suicide in the
early thirties leaving two young sons and a powerful mystery. The book, wonderfully structured so
the sense of time is mobile and continuous, moves back and forth through memory and discovery,
is a compelling story with characters of such life and particularity, they jump off the page. It is the
story of a granddaughter's discovery of self as she uncovers her grandmother's life.
A real page turner."
— Susan Shreve, author of A STUDENT OF LIVING THINGS and WARM SPRINGS.
"Bibi Gaston's hard-to-put down narrative mixes a Harvard Business School Case Study of American
upper-class family dysfunction and tragedy, with entertainment history, with the most significant
ingredient of all -- the healing of the scars on her own heart. The whole business is a miracle." —
Tappan Wilder, Literary Executor
THE LOVELIEST WOMAN IN AMERICA is Bibi Gaston's deeply moving chronicle of
her search for home. The end is unexpected and shattering."—Horton Foote
