Sara and Gerald: Villa America and After

A very personal memoir by the daughter of the fabulous couple who made living well the best revenge, author Honoria Murphy's childhood was the stuff of grown-up fantasy. 'Earnest Hemingway taught her to ski and to clean fish and not to wear high heels while bowling. Dorothy Parker showed her how to tipple tequila and lime. Picasso provided art criticism....Cole Porter added the music and F. Scott Fitzgerald the magic. She was the only daughter of Sara and Gerald Murphy, the golden American who, between the wars, created the emigre artists' paradise in the south of France. Their sunny charm, elegant good looks, and trend-setting brilliance, which made them Beautiful People before the term was coined, was chronicled in the bestselling 'Living Well is the Best Revenge.'

But there was another aspect to the Murphy's story, shadowing their gilded days with spirit-crushing loss. In this remarkable reminiscence, Honoria Murphy Donnelly includes her parents' sad as well as happy times, the intimate dramas as well as celebrity-studded anecdotes, in a deeply touching portrait of a family both very special and very human. From the lush lawns of East Hampton, New York, to the sun-struck Riviera beaches to the echoing corridors of exclusive Swiss sanitoriums, the legend of Sara and Gerald is funny, harrowing, memorable...but it is finally a story of love and courage, the triumph of a couple who won the hearts of a generation and, now, through their daughter, wins ours.