The Beneficiary

February 15, 2019
A Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist explores her charming but mysterious father's life and family history.Jestingly called "the Duke of Villanova" by Scott (A Singular Woman: The Untold Story of Barack Obama's Mother, 2011) and her family, Robert Scott grew up the heir to a "middling American fortune" built by the author's grandfather. Yet Robert, who did not have access to the trusts that "went to the oldest generation," insisted on spending money he earned--first as a lawyer then, later, as president of the Philadelphia Museum of Art--on maintaining a family mansion he did not own. Drawing on family letters and conversations, her father's journals, and her own vivid memories, the author probes the secrets of her family. As Scott chronicles, Robert's grandfather, who was reported to have died of illness during World War I, actually committed suicide out of fear of being publicly humiliated for "a bender involving a woman and booze." Robert's beautiful socialite mother, Helen, was the inspiration for the character Tracy Lord in The Philadelphia Story, and his literary-minded father, Edgar, consorted with members of the Algonquin Round Table before founding a Philadelphia stockbrokerage. But for all their glamour, Robert's parents remained a sadly "intermittent presence" in the life of a son who would later say that he had been "raised by Irish cooks and maids." Reading Robert's journals--discovered nearly a decade after his death--the author discovered that her outwardly breezy father suffered a deep existential anguish that came out in his lifelong addiction to alcohol. The family story the author tells is fascinating for the painful personal legacies it uncovers. At the same time, it is also compelling for the parallels it draws between an earlier age of inequality and our own and the questions it raises about how contemporary stories of new-rich families "will play out, one hundred years hence."A heartfelt and rich narrative tapestry.

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March 1, 2019
Journalist Scott, who profiled Barack Obama's mother in A Singular Woman (2011), looks to her own family for this memoir. Beginning with her great-grandparents on both sides, Scott takes the first half of her book to trace the history of her family's wealth, mostly evidenced in their living arrangements. The Ardrossan estate, built by Scott's father's grandfather and handed down to her grandmother Helen Hope Montgomery, included several residences as well as stables, a dairy farm, and a herd of sheep. Helen was a larger-than-life personality who could consistently be found in the society pages, and her son, Robert Montgomery Scott, is the focus of the book's second half. The author mines his diaries to understand a father she never really knew except as a socialite and alcoholic. It seems that not only could no amount of privilege, wealth, or lineage save him but these were the very things that led to his downfall. A compelling and detailed portrait of a time, place, and way of life that would be foreign for most readers.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)

May 24, 2019

Part of a New York Times reporting team that won a Pulitzer Prize for national reporting in 2000, Scott is also the author of A Singular Woman: The Untold Story of Barack Obama's Mother. Here she turns to her own family, opening with the 800-acre estate built by Scott's investment banker great-grandfather on Philadelphia's Main Line to show the consequences for several generations (especially her troubled father) of land and wealth.

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