Through the prism of her father's life as a lawyer and well-known political activist, Patricia Bosworth sheds light on an important era in modern American history -- from the heady, hope-filled days of Roosevelt's New Deal to the dawn of the Cold War.

In the course of a remarkable career, Bartley Crum represented movie stars and labor leaders, advised presidents and presidential hopefuls, emerged as a key figure in the creation of Israel, and became a forceful voice for civil rights. But when his defense of the Hollywood Ten made him a target of the FBI's andcommunist hysteria, public pressures and personal demons brought his once-charmed life to a tragic end. Interweaving public and private vignettes, his daughter's memoir re-creates Crum's life and times with rare and moving honesty.

"Consider this beautiful, saddening book on a par with Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy....It is an extraordinary document...written with blood and tears". -- Carolyn See, The Washington Post Book World

"Extraordinary...as beautifully written as any memoir I have ever read". -- Charles Kaiser, The New York Observer

Amazon.com Review
The author profiles her relatives with the same sensitivity she brought to biographies of Montgomery Clift and Diane Arbus. She pays tribute to the liberal idealism that led her father, Bartley C. Crum, to defend unpopular leftists at home and Jewish refugees desperate to get into Palestine abroad, even as she depicts his lengthy absences and financial carelessness wreaking havoc on his wife and children. Patricia Bosworth's portraits of her unhappy, adulterous mother and withdrawn, suicidal brother are equally nuanced. The subtitle says it all: "An American Family Story."