The Architect of Desire: Beauty and Danger in the Stanford White Family

In 1906, Suzannah Lessard's great-grandfather, the prominent architect, socialite, and hedonist Stanford White, was sensationally murdered by the husband of a showgirl White had seduced when she was 16. The acquittal of the killer on the grounds of insanity added to the scandalous gossip. In this beautifully written memoir, Lessard, a writer for the New Yorker, recalls growing up on the White family estate on Long Island, where the murder was a taboo subject. She evokes a sense of repressed and dark passion that infected the harmonious landscaping and architecture White had created. She writes of "coldness that may feel like warmth, or violence that presents as lust for life." In this extraordinarily literary nonfiction mystery, Lessard slowly reveals that her family history held more secrets than the murder, and reaches a startling and controversial climax.