• Paperback: 196 pages
• List Price: $16.95 US
• Laurel Saville’s Website
• Publisher:iUniverse.com (September 25, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1440161070
• ISBN-13: 978-1440161070

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Sadly, some lives cannot be understood until after death. So it was with Anne Ford. A charming beauty queen, model, and fashion designer during the 1950s, this glamour girl 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.

Postmortemtakes the reader on an emotionally charged journey that ranges from her 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 Barney’s Beanery, Saville’s distinctive prose lends insight into events and emotions. This candid exploration of one woman’s life and death ends up exposing unexpected and highly-charged truths about both mother and daughter.

Postmortemis the story of Anne Ford, the authors mother. A beauty queen, model & fashion designer during the 1950′s, but plagued by inner demons that eventually lead to her becoming a street person & later being stabbed & strangled to death. Years later, Laurel Saville began a journey into understanding the duality of her mother.

Postmortem was a brilliant look from two sides of the coin, Ms. Saville looking at what she knows of her mother & at what she has told her mother was. It’s rather heartbreaking to see how her mother fell from someone so well respected to someone you’d pass by in the streets without a second glance. It shows you what alcohol can do to a family, Ms. Saville having to watch her mother decline to her demons for the first 13 years of her life.

It’s also extremely haunting at how much disregard her mother had for Ms. Saville, there’s a story about a man following them in a car & her mother totally brushing it off. That story was horrifying, thinking about it in a child’s perspective knowing you’ve always been told not to talk to strangers & here is your own mother doing the opposite.

Yet what amazed me most was Ms. Saville’s lack of blame gaming. She doesn’t once blame her mother, but depicts this as her reality & wants to learn more. It totally amazed me that she could become the woman she is with all she dealt with as a child.

Postmortem is an extremly compelling novel & the authors struggle to work through her past & that of her mothers.