Evelyn Nesbit became a household vision and icon for the
early 1900's during the Gilded Age in New York. Growing up
in an unhealthy and unstable home, her mom turned a blind
eye as many older men inappropriately wooed her daughter
into high society and its hidden menaces. Taken by Stanford
White to be his mistress and paid concubine, Mamma Nesbit
allowed the dark behavior of the family's benefactor without
question. Stanford paid for the family to live as it had
never done so before.
Along comes Harry Thaw, another wanting millionaire, ready
to pay the price to keep Evelyn in the style she was used
to. A monster with many hidden obsessions, Harry convinced
Evelyn that it was in her best interests to marry him. Let
the games begin!!! Harry's arch enemy in his own mind was
none other than Stanford White and the fact that he had
deflowered his wife, only served to fuel the fire even more
fiercely. In his obsessive compulsive mind, Harry would be
the hero of all times if he could rid the world of Stanford
and his degradation of young innocent girls.
With absolutely no remorse and in full view of everyone at
Madison Square Garden Roof, a place designed by Stanford,
Harry shot Stanford. Leaving Evelyn minus the two men who
had protected her financially, the journey began to rebuild
her life. In the end Evelyn seemed to go full circle through
life and the calamities of being a misguided beauty.
Paula Uruburu's AMERICAN EVE -- EVELYN NESBIT, STANFORD WHITE
-- THE BIRTH OF THE "IT"GIRL AND THE CRIME OF THE CENTURY
depicts life in the early 1900's as seedy as it is today.
The rich were afforded a life of moral deprivation as long
as everyone looked the other way, and it is the story of
Evelyn Nesbit that portrays the times in such a light as to
bring the reader the realities of its injustices. Ms.
Uruburu has a wonderful way of writing facts of an bygone
era for a modern reader. A must read for history buffs who
enjoy true crimes.
The scandalous story of America's first supermodel,
sex goddess, and modern celebrity, Evelyn Nesbit, the
temptress at the center of Stanford White's famous murder,
whose iconic life story reflected all the paradoxes of
America's Gilded Age.
Known to millions before
her sixteenth birthday in 1900, Evelyn Nesbit was the most
photographed woman of her era, an iconic figure who set the
standard for female beauty. Women wanted to be her. Men just
wanted her. When her life of fantasy became all too real,
and her jealous millionaire husband, Harry K. Thaw, killed
her lover—celebrity architect Stanford White, builder of the
Washington Square Arch and much of New York City—she found
herself at the center of the "Crime of the Century" and the
popular courtroom drama that followed—a scandal that
signaled the beginning of a national obsession with youth,
beauty, celebrity, and sex.
The story of Evelyn
Nesbit is one of glamour, money, romance, sex, madness, and
murder, and Paula Uruburu weaves all of these elements into
an elegant narrative that reads like the best fiction— only
it's all true. American Eve goes far beyond just
literary biography; it paints a picture of America as it
crossed from the Victorian era into the modern,
foreshadowing so much of our contemporary culture today.