This is a recently published memoir. I read about five chapters this afternoon and am enjoying it. I had no idea until today that the Astor fortune is gone -- assumed there was some rich Astor trust fund kids around, but no. Here's the description from Amazon:
The Astor Orphan
is an unflinching debut memoir by a direct
descendant of John Jacob Astor, Alexandra Aldrich.
She brilliantly tells the story of her eccentric, fractured family; her 1980s
childhood of bohemian neglect in the squalid attic of Rokeby, the family’s
Hudson Valley Mansion; and her brave escape from the clan. Aldrich reaches back
to the Gilded Age when the Astor legacy began to come undone, leaving the
Aldrich branch of the family penniless and squabbling over what was left.
Illustrated with black-and-white photographs that bring this faded world into
focus, The Astor Orphan is written with the grit of The Glass
Castle
and set amid the aristocratic decay of Grey Gardens.
That sounds like another good one!
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