Synopsis
"PostMortem is as unflinching an act of courage as you're likely to find in everyday life, a journey through soul-rotting self-destruction and its bitter zone of pain toward grace and forgiveness and the ultimate necessity of love...
Laurel Saville is capable of steady lucid prose that continually ascends to eloquence, wisdom, and, at the end of it all, compassion."
-Bob Shacochis, National Book Award-winning Author of Easy in the Islands and The Immaculate Invasion
Sadly, some lives cannot be understood until after death. So it was with Anne Ford. A charming beauty queen, model, and fashion designer during the 1950s, this glamour girl was poisoned by internal demons and the permissive Southern California culture of the 1960s and 70s. She ended her life as an alcoholic street person, stabbed and strangled in a burned-out building in West Hollywood. Years later, her daughter, the writer Laurel Saville, began the long process of unraveling the twin trajectories of this unusual life.
Postmortem takes the reader on an emotionally charged journey that ranges from her eccentric West Hollywood childhood to a top-secret, Depression-era airplane design. Whether describing the artists of the seminal Sunset Strip gallery where Andy Warhol got his start or the hippie parties at Barney's Beanery, Saville's distinctive prose lends insight into events and emotions. This candid exploration of one woman's life and death ends up exposing unexpected and highly-charged truths about both mother and daughter.