But it’s true that Brooke Astor had a better final year of her life thanks to her grandson, Philip Marshall, and the lawsuit. Readers tell me their feelings toward the players change as they read the book. I was trying to learn as much as I could about everyone. You do a masterful job in the book of keeping your authorial feelings under wraps, but who do you think were the heroes and villains?Ī. It made me think about the people around Brooke Astor and what had happened leading up to the lawsuit. It made me think of a plane crash and how you talk to everybody about their lives leading up to the fateful moment. How do you get a son suing his father over his grandmother? I realized that there had to be more to the story. That weekend I realized I was obsessed with these people.
I wrote a piece for New York magazine on the Astor case and turned it in on a Friday. Like many writers, I’ve been trying to write a book for many years.
What was so compelling in this story that it led you to write your first book?Ī. As a journalist, you’ve interviewed so many famous people-Kofi Annan, Mike Bloomberg, Susan Sarandon, Nicole Kidman, to name a few. If convicted, he could spend the rest of his life not in the grand homes his mother left him, but in jail. His trial is scheduled to begin in late February. Astor’s son, 84-year-old Anthony "Tony" Marshall, faces an 18-count indictment, including charges of grand larceny, conspiracy and forgery. Readers responded to its in-depth exploration of upper-crust society and identified with the teeth-gnashing anguish of settling even modest estates. After Astor grandson Philip Marshall’s lawsuit made international headlines, Gordon was gripped by the psychological mystery that led this family to erupt, and by the breach that had exposed the closed social circle of the superrich. Although from a modest background herself, Gordon was a longtime New Yorker who was familiar with the Astor family’s hold on the city both philanthropically and socially. Swirling around this main cast are supporting players whose names are stripped straight from newspaper headlines, including de la Renta, Kissinger and Rockefeller.Īuthor Meryl Gordon, 58, set out to infiltrate this blue-blooded world and explain how the disbursement of an estate worth tens of millions of dollars had torn a family apart. Astor Regrets: The Hidden Betrayals of a Family Beyond Reproach is full of unforgettable characters: the widow Astor, an elderly grande dame of fabulous wealth and storied name her only son and his grasping wife, a couple whose questionable management of Brooke Astor’s fortune is at the heart of the story and an unpretentious grandson who sues his father to protect his grandmother from abuse.
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