Lovely Me: The Life of Jacqueline Susann

Pioneering feminist health scholar and Ms. contributor Barbara Seaman dishes all the delicious dirt on Jackie Susann, who left more dirt in her wake than most tornadoes: countless affairs with the famous and infamous (including Ethel Merman!), a scary passion for her father (whom Jackie, age 4, caught in flagrante delicto with a woman not his wife), and a cancer-ravaged life, exacerbated by enough drug binges and showgirl catfights to fill the most notorious roman á clef in world history, Valley of the Dolls. Seaman also does an investigative reporter's spade work. She explains how Susann's ambitious marketing ideas revolutionized the book business--at 19 million copies sold, Valley is the top-scoring novel ever written--and she checks out the sad history of Susann's autistic son, who was stashed away in a horrifying institution (which was the subject of a Geraldo Rivera exposé), and then mysteriously disappeared from public view. Susann's poodle Josephine apparently took her son's place in her heart, and her book about the pooch, Every Night, Josephine!, launched her weird bestseller career. Valley of the Dolls is amazingly entertaining, but unless you've read Lovely Me, you don't know Jacqueline Susann.