A spellbinding tale of money and madness, incest and matricide, Savage Grace is the saga of Brooks and Barbara Baekeland -- beautiful, rich, worldly -- and their handsome, gentle son, Tony. Alternately neglected and smothered by his parents, he was finally driven to destroy the whole family in a violent chain of events. Savage Grace unfolds against a glamorous international background (New York, London, Paris, Italy, Spain); features a nonpareil cast of characters (including Salvador Dalí, James Jones, the Astors, the Vanderbilts, and European nobility); and tells the doomed Baekelands' story through remarkably candid interviews, private letters, and diaries, not to mention confidential hospital, State Department, and prison documents. A true-crime classic, it exposes the envied lives of the rich and beautiful, and brilliantly illuminates the darkest corners of the American Dream. "An American fable of enduring resonance...a macabre piece of Americana." -- Newsweek "The true and harrowing story of an Upper East Side New York family whose cultivation of taste, pursuit of social distinction, and fashionable expatriatism led its members to drugs, to apparent incest, to murder, and to suicide." -- E. L. Doctorow "Jet-set expatriates in a murder case -- how fast we turn the pages. Savage Grace has to be the best oral history to come out since Edie ." -- Norman Mailer Fascinating...A family saga with plot twists worthy of Dynasty or perhaps just Tennessee Williams -- it has a mythic quality that echoes Greek tragedy." -- The New York Times "A classic...a chilling wedding of Mommie Dearest and Long Day's Journey into Night ." - The Washington Post "The sizzling, spellbinding story of the rich and powerful Baekeland clan, who owed their money to Bakelite, the original plastic. A snake pit of love triangles, sexual betrayal, and incest, culminating in the crime of crimes, matricide. Features a dazzling cross section of society, literature, and the arts." -- Daily News (New York) "Overwhelmingly compelling.... This tale of aberrant Beautiful People is horrific and potent." -- Boston Herald "An epic portrait of a family.... The Baekelands, on a collision course with disaster, typify the American dream gone sour.... A sobering and sordid story, with the incestuous mother and son as its stars." -- The Milwaukee Journal "A story of spectacular decadence -- of money, madness, and matricide....The cast of brilliant characters includes James Jones, William Styron, Patricia Neal, Alastair Reid, Brendan Gill and Francine du Plessix Gray....Seldom has there been so devastating an exposure of consequences, for the most sophisticated people, of failure in the simplest duties of love." -- William F. Buckley, Jr. "The story is evoked with arresting detail...the power of horror." -- Time Natalie Robins 's books include Copeland's Cure , The Girl Who Died Twice , and Alien Ink . She lives in New York City. Steven M. L. Aronson is the author of HYPE . A former book editor and publisher, he lives in New York City. Savage Grace The True Story of Fatal Relations in a Rich and Famous American Family By Natalie Robins Touchstone Copyright © 2007 Natalie Robins All right reserved. ISBN: 9781416572961 1 The Crime of Crimes Friday, November 17, 1972, dawned hazy and cloudy, but by three o'clock the sun was shining with unaccustomed benevolence for London. The leaves in Cadogan Square had turned and were dropping in the gardens. All her life -- and she was only fifty when she died, a little later that afternoon -- Barbara Baekeland was partial to fall colors. Even in summer, when everyone would be wearing white, she persisted in dressing like an autumn leaf. The rust-colored skirts and bronze shoes she favored suited her beauty -- the bonfire of red hair, the milkmaid skin. A friend had once said of her that she had the quality of intelligent flamboyance. Whether in Boston, where she was born to a family of modest means called Daly -- or Hollywood, where once upon a time she was given a screen test -- or New York and Paris, where she created salons for herself -- or such resorts as Long Island's East Hampton, Ansedonia on Italy's Argentario, and Cadaqués on Spain's Costa Brava, where she was forever taking houses in season and out -- or, finally, in London, where she had acquired a penthouse duplex in Chelsea -- Barbara Baekeland could be counted on to turn heads. "London ends by giving one absolutely everything one asks," Henry James wrote in his preface to The Golden Bowl ; the city was, in his opinion, "the most possible form of life." "London with its six-times-breathed-over air seems such a dream," Barbara Baekeland wrote to a friend in New York that November Friday. "Had Le Tout London here last night My oeuvre has had a great success -- everybody loved what I've done to the flat." The very first thing one saw on entering the apartment was the portrait of