It makes sense that the author is an NYT writer; this felt a little like investigative reporting. I was sold on the Tracy Lord angle, but what sucked me in was the exploration of family history, legacy, fortune, and misfortune. It's fascinating how incredible wealth can tie people into toxic relationship patterns and family dynamics and keep them captive against their real needs. Also, how hard it is for children to really know their parents, especially when muffled by so much wealth and baggage, and how much more free people can be among newcomers than those who are closest to them. ( )

Probably wouldn't have read this if it hadn't involved local names and places. An interesting story of privilege and what great wealth can do to people. It got much better once she started writing about her father's alcoholism and time at Maclean. ( )

Chronicle of the author's family from the first quarter of the 19th century to present day. Notable because her ancestors were part of the Main Line group who made their fortune annexing land for the construction of the Pennsylvania Railroad married in with the families of investment bankers. The first third of the book deals with those family members in broad sketches which become more detailed as she approaches her grandparents, Helen Hope Montgomery Scott and Edgar Scott. Her grandmother was a grand dame of Philadelphia and is said to be the person that the main character (Tracy Lord played by Katherine Hepburn) in The Philadelphia Story is based upon.

The remaining two thirds of the book deal with her father, Robert Montgomery Scott, whose diaries and letters came into her posession several years after his death. It is a story of great wealth and the lack of purpose bestowed upon the beneficiaries of the wealth. It is also a story of alcoholism, handed down through a family.

The story is well written. The parts that involve her father are more memoir than chronicle. I found it to be interesting to see wealth trickle down and through the fingers of the subsequent generations...the fortune and misfortune of the title. ( )