Empty Mansions

When Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Bill Dedman noticed in 2009 a grand, unoccupied home for sale, he stumbled through a surprising portal into American history. Empty Mansions is a rich mystery of wealth and loss, connecting the vast 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, who lived alone 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 did someone else control it for her? Dedman has collaborated with Huguette Clark’s cousin Paul Clark Newell Jr. , one of the few relatives to have frequent conversations with her.