Book summary

Using notes and interviews from writer Linda Kuehl's attempted 1970s Billie Holiday biography (Kuehl committed suicide after encountering problems getting the book published), author Julia Blackburn constructs an illuminating patchwork of recollections--some affectionate, some horrifying--from Holiday's friends, lovers, and musical colleagues. They chronicle a woman damaged, resilient, promiscuous, drug-addicted, masochistic, and ultimately perhaps unknowable. Though Blackburn doesn't attempt to weave these stories into a narrative thread, Holiday's life is impressionistically conjured over the book's course as the complex and often upsetting details of her life gradually emerge.

Media reviews

"[T]he first clear evocation..of the world from which Billie emerged and in which she lived....[T]his book is invaluable...."