Susan Cheever

Bestselling author Susan Cheever chronicles our national love affair with liquor, taking a long, thoughtful look at the way alcohol has changed our nation's history. This is the often-overlooked story of how alcohol has shaped American events and the American character from the seventeenth to the twentieth century.

Biography fans will devour Louisa May Alcott, Susan Cheever’s briskly paced examination of the Little Women author, who died at age 55 in 1888. Even if Alcott’s background hadn’t included writing an enduring classic of American literature, her life would have made for a rollicking read. It’s an opportunity that Cheever does not squander.

"In a provocative and deeply personal look at the least acknowledged of all addictions, Cheever examines the ways in which sexually obsessed people confuse lust with love and the damage they do to themselves and those around them as they distort affection and desire with abuse and deception."

Even the most devoted readers of nineteenth-century American literature often assume that the men and women behind the masterpieces were as dull and staid as the era's static daguerreotypes. Susan Cheever's latest work, however, brings new life to the well-known literary personages who produced such cherished works as The Scarlet Letter, Moby-Dick, Walden, and Little Women. Rendering in full color the tumultuous, often scandalous lives of these volatile and vulnerable geniuses, Cheever's dynamic narrative reminds us that, while these literary heroes now seem secure of their spots in the canon, they were once considered avant-garde, bohemian types, at odds with the establishment.

In this definitive and groundbreaking biography, acclaimed author Susan Cheever offers a remarkably human portrait of a man whose life and work both influenced and saved the lives of millions of people. Drawing from personal letters, diaries, AA archives, interviews -- and Cheever's own experiences with alcoholism -- My Name Is Bill is the first fully documented, deeply felt account of Bill Wilson and Alcoholics Anonymous.

"Cheever's honest, realistic approach to the difficulties of parenting is refreshing, as is her optimistic belief that people can be good parents despite their own unhappy childhoods."

In Home Before Dark, Susan Cheever, daughter of the famously talented writer John Cheever, uses previously unpublished letters, journals, and her own precious memories to create a candid and insightful tribute to her father. While producing some of the most beloved and celebrated American literature of this century, John Cheever wrestled with personal demons that deeply affected his family life as well as his career. In this poignant memoir of a man driven by boundless genius and ambition, Susan Cheever writes with heartwrenching honesty of family life with the father, the writer, and the remarkable man she loved.

"A memoir that floats like a sad song, with its themes the effervescence of champagne and the flatness of the morning after... A poignant and fortright tale of a rugged journey by an extraordinarily gifted writer."

"Engrossing... moving... Treetops is Susan Cheever's... most satisfyingly realized work to date."
"This smooth, articulate, inviting book takes us into the lair of a celebrated family. Susan Cheever, with keen observation and incisive character sketches, offers a tantalizingly spare memoir."
"Because it's such a fascinating family, it's a fascinating book, but it's not always a pretty story, and one has to admire Susan Cheever's courage in telling it... Her greatest gifts come across in her memoirs... Home Before Dark and Treetops have established her as a very accomplished writer."

"The heroine... is a 30-year-old New York graphic designer whose father is a famous artist. When first met, Elizabeth is involved in an intense affair with Sebastian Smith, a successful, married art dealer; she is still haunted by memories of her former lover, journalist Patrick Casey..."

Clarkson N. Potter, 1987

Houghton Mifflin, 1982 (hardcover)
Random House, 1983 (paperback)

Publicist Hannah Bart goes to Ireland with her older lover, Sam Noble, to meet his estranged son, Travis, and finds herself in competition with the young man for his father's love.

Simon & Schuster, 1980. Paperback: Fawcett, 1982.