My First Cousin Once Removed: Money, Madness, and the Family of Robert Lowell Book

This sometimes funny, often sad, but completely true story examines the fortunes of the family of novelist Sarah Payne Stuart. Stuart recalls the struggles of an aristocratic family whose sense of privilege and entitlement belied the fact their wealth was no more. In addition to their financial struggles, several members of the family (including Stuart's brother and her famous first cousin, poet Robert Lowell) wound up in mental institutions.Their struggle to keep up a proper facade, even as their world crumbled around them, makes a bittersweet tale that will inspire laughter and tears.

Seattle Weekly

Stuart is a deft writer who knows how to snare her audience with brilliant, bitter-black humor while touching lightly but with sure, probing fingers each of our darker fears, our least favorite wounds. . . .An irreverent and clear-sighted mediation on the claustrophobic yet seductive bonds of family, as well as an intimate portrait of a famous man, My First Cousin Once Removed is a wry and haunting story of survival in the midst of instability and dynastic decline.