The names that appear in Caroline de Margerie's American Lady are so impressive, the historic events and settings so inclusive, it's hard to believe one woman lived through it all. This fascinating biography of Susan Mary Alsop introduces readers to a colorful American aristocrat who was on hand to experience many of the most significant events of the 20th century.
Born a Jay in 1918 (of the founding family; her grandmother was an Astor), 21-year-old Susan Mary wed Bill Patten in 1939. After Bill was posted to Paris with the State Department in 1944, she blossomed as a diplomat's wife. "She liked seeing 'history on the boil' as Nancy Mitford put it," de Margerie writes, "being present in a room where the fate of the world was being played out." Her fame as a hostess, which lasted throughout her 86 years, started in Paris, and so, too, did the love affair of her life, with Duff Cooper. After Duff's death, then Bill's, she agreed to a platonic marriage with deeply closeted columnist Joseph Alsop; their Georgetown home became a renowned salon where anybody-who-was-anybody gathered, including Kennedys ("Please call me Jackie"), Kissingers and Grahams.
The delicious details of power and wealth don't obscure de Margerie's portrait of the less-public Susan Mary, a loving and loyal mother and friend who studied issues and held thoughtful opinions, volunteered, traveled globally and, in the last decades of her life, wrote four books. --Cheryl Krocker McKeon, bookseller