The PHANTOM of MERYL FIFTH AVENUE GORDON Read by Bernadette Dunne hen Huguette Clark died in the spring of 2011, the 104-year- old heiress left behind three sprawling apartments on New York’s Fifth Avenue, a twenty-three-acre oceanfront compound in Santa Barbara, and a battle over a $300 million estate that pitted her late- in-life caregivers versus her long-lost relatives. She also left behind a mystery: How did a vivacious debutante—a woman who learned to surf in Hawaii from Duke Kahanamoku and danced at the Waldorf Astoria’s Starlight Room—end up spending the last twenty years of her life hiding out in hospitals and collecting The antique French porcelain dolls? While press accounts reduced her to cliché—an elderly recluse preyed upon by those she trusted—the real story is far more complex. Born PHANTOM in 1906, Huguette grew up in her family’s 121-room Beaux Arts mansion in Manhattan. Her father, William Andrews Clark, was a copper magnate, the second-richest man in America, and not above bribing his way into the Senate. At twenty-two with a personal fortune of $50 million to her name, she married childhood friend William MacDonald Gower, a Princeton man. Two years later the couple divorced. After a series of failed romances, Huguette began to withdraw from society—first living a few floors above her mother at 907 Fifth Avenue and after her mother’s death by herself in a vast apartment overlooking Central Park, dining on sardines and watching The Flintstones with only hired help for company. of Thanks to diaries, exclusive interviews with members of Huguette’s inner circle, newly discovered love letters, and access to seventy-six boxes of archival FIFTH material removed from her apartment, author Meryl Gordon finally solves the mystery of what turned a Jazz Age socialite into an Internet-era recluse. What was her life like inside that gilded, copper cage? MERYL GORDON is the author of Mrs. Astor Regrets: The Hidden Betrayals of a Family Beyond Reproach. She is an award-winning journalist whose articles have appeared AVENUE in Vanity Fair, the New York Times, and New York Magazine, and the director of Magazine Writing at New York University’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. A native of Rochester, New York, and a graduate of the University of Michigan, she lives on Manhattan’s Upper West Side with her husband, Walter Shapiro. Running Time: Approx. 13.5 Hours • Unabridged Copyright © 2014 by Meryl Gordon. All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the duplicating, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this audiobook without the permission of the publisher is unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material MERYL from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights. 햯 2014 Hachette GORDON Audio. All rights reserved. Jacket © 2014 Hachette Book Group, Inc. A division of Hachette Book Group, 237 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017. Cover design by Gabriele Wilson. Photo of Huguette Clark, circa 1920’s. UNABRIDGED www.HachetteAudio.com 30479 Playaway preloaded audiobooks are the best way to listen, unplugged and uninterrupted. WWW.PLAYAWAY.COM © 2014 Playaway. Patented. All rights reserved. Designed in Ohio. Made in China. .