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Postmortem

“Sadly, some lives cannot be understood until after death.”

So it was with Anne Ford. A successful, charming beauty queen, model, and fashion designer during the 1950s, this glamour girl about town was poisoned by internal demons and the permissive Southern California culture of the 1960s and 70s. She ended her life as an alcoholic street person, stabbed and strangled in a burned-out building in West Hollywood. Years later, her daughter, the writer Laurel Saville, began the long process of unraveling the twin trajectories of this unusual life.

Postmortem takes the reader on an emotionally charged journey that ranges from Saville's eccentric West Hollywood childhood, to a top-secret, Depression-era airplane design. Whether describing the artists of the seminal Sunset Strip gallery where Andy Warhol got his start or the hippie parties at the legendary Barney's Beanery, Saville's distinctive prose lends insight into the events and emotions that surrounded the life and death of stunning Anne Ford. This candid exploration of one woman's life and death ends up exposing unexpected truths about both mother and daughter and unscrambling the many webs that entangled Ford's exceptional life.

  • 09.
    05
    Oct

    "An unflinching act of courage...."

    Bob Shacochis, the National Book Award-winning author of Easy in the Islands and The Immaculate Invasion has this to say about Postmortem: "Postmortem is as unflinching an act of courage as you're likely to find in everyday life...a journey through soul-rotting self-destruction and it's bitter zone of pain toward grace and forgiveness and the ultimate necessity of love...Laurel Saville is capable of the gaze of steady, lucid prose that continually ascents to eloquence, wisdom, and, at the end of it all, compassion."

  • 09.
    01
    Oct

    "I couldn't put it down..."

    Sean Adams, principle of the of award-winning design firm AdamsMorioka, shares his experience reading the Postmortem manuscript and his efforts to design the cover. “I couldn’t put the manuscript down. I read all of it on a flight from LAX to JFK. Now I had to do justice to the quality of the story with the cover. The story, for me, was not about a tragic murder, but about life on the edge, emotionally and literally.” His blog entry includes outtakes from the design process. Click Here >>

  • 09.
    25
    Sep

    Postmortem awarded "Editor's Choice"

    The publisher of Postmortem has awarded the title "Editor's Choice", a designation of excellence given to fewer than 10% of all titles they publish. The independent editorial consultant assigned to evaluate the book called it "a compelling, moving memoir...."