Bill Dedman Discusses Empty Mansions

Fabled is thrilled to welcome Bill Dedman to discuss his book Empty Mansions on October 16th at 7PM! 

About the Book:

When Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Bill Dedman noticed in 2009 a grand home for sale, unoccupied for nearly sixty years, he stumbled through a surprising portal into American history. Empty Mansions is a rich mystery of wealth and loss, connecting the Gilded Age opulence of the nineteenth century with a twenty-first-century battle over a $300 million inheritance. At its heart is a reclusive heiress named Huguette Clark, a woman so secretive that, at the time of her death at age 104, no new photograph of her had been seen in decades. Though she owned palatial homes in California, New York, and Connecticut, why had she lived for twenty years in a simple hospital room, despite being in excellent health? Why were her valuables being sold off? Was she in control of her fortune, or controlled by those managing her money?

Dedman has collaborated with Huguette Clark’s cousin, Paul Clark Newell, Jr., one of the few relatives to have frequent conversations with her. Dedman and Newell tell a fairy tale in reverse: the bright, talented daughter, born into a family of extreme wealth and privilege, who secrets herself away from the outside world.

Huguette was the daughter of self-made copper industrialist W. A. Clark, nearly as rich as Rockefeller in his day, a controversial senator, railroad builder, and founder of Las Vegas. She grew up in the largest house in New York City, a remarkable dwelling with 121 rooms for a family of four. She owned paintings by Degas and Renoir, a world-renowned Stradivarius violin, a vast collection of antique dolls. But wanting more than treasures, she devoted her wealth to buying gifts for friends and strangers alike, to quietly pursuing her own work as an artist, and to guarding the privacy she valued above all else.

The Clark family story spans nearly all of American history in three generations, from a log cabin in Pennsylvania to mining camps in the Montana gold rush, from backdoor politics in Washington to a distress call from an elegant Fifth Avenue apartment. The same Huguette who was touched by the terror attacks of 9/11 held a ticket nine decades earlier for a first-class stateroom on the second voyage of the Titanic.

Empty Mansions reveals a complex portrait of the mysterious Huguette and her intimate circle. We meet her extravagant father, her publicity-shy mother, her star-crossed sister, her French boyfriend, her nurse who received more than $30 million in gifts, and the relatives fighting to inherit Huguette’s copper fortune. Richly illustrated with more than seventy photographs, Empty Mansions is an enthralling story of an eccentric of the highest order, a last jewel of the Gilded Age who lived life on her own terms.

HBO is developing a series based on Empty Mansions with director Joe Wright (Atonement, Pride and Prejudice, Anna Karenina, Darkest Hour).

About the Author: 

Bill Dedman is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter and co-author of the No. 1 bestselling biography Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great American Fortune. Bill got his start in journalism at 16 as a copy boy at The Chattanooga Times. Bill has written for The Associated Press, The Washington Post, and The New York Times, working in newspapers, online news, television, and magazines. He received the 1989 Pulitzer Prize in investigative reporting for The Color of Money, an investigation of racial discrimination by banks in middle-income Black neighborhoods. Thirty years later, he was one of the lead reporters on Long Island Divided, a Peabody Award-winning investigation of illegal steering by real estate agents in violation of the Fair Housing Act. Bill stumbled onto the mystery of the reclusive heiress Huguette Clark, who was featured in his series of reports in 2010. The Clark series was the most popular story ever on NBCNews.com, with more than 110 million page views. He co-wrote with Clark's cousin, Paul Clark Newell, Jr., the biography Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great American Fortune.