Maligned Beauty

I recently completed Maligned Beauty, the story of my deceased daughter, Natasha, and her mysterious death in 2001.

Why, you might ask, did I wait more than two decades to write Natasha’s story? Because my husband Ian and I, to save our marriage, agreed to stop torturing ourselves by investigating our daughter’s death. Ian died August 24^th, 2021, shortly before I finished his memoir, Watch Me Take Off. The following year, Gail Wilson Kenna, my friend and editor sought information about Natasha. Had I saved any documents she wanted to know. I said I kept everything related to Natasha’s life, from birth to death, and pulled a pile of folders from a cabinet. Gail said I saved it all for a reason and urged me to write about Natasha and give her the legacy she deserved.  

Sometime later, I placed everything related to Natasha’s life on the dining-room table: school documents, awards, notebooks, journals, police reports, press articles, and more. 

Next, I watched a tape of Diane Sawyer on Good Morning America when she interviewed Ian and me. I also read Terry Knickerbocker’s eulogy, which this renowned acting teacher handed me before Natasha’s memorial at the Frank E. Campbell Funeral Chapel in NYC on July 27th, 2001.

Over the years, mysterious circumstances have kept occurring related to Natasha’s death. These are woven throughout Maligned Beauty; and these mysterious connections have given me the strength to relive the saddest time of my life. Most of all, they have given me the courage to write Natasha’s story, which has been an act of great pain and enduring love.

It is difficult beyond words to find an agent in our age of too many books and too few readers. Yet I persist in this challenge and welcome help from others. Although I make it sound as if I alone wrote Maligned Beauty, I am deeply grateful to my friend and editor, Gail Wilson Kenna. 

I welcome questions and your response to my blog.