I am looking for a book that might be similar to the song “The Last Great American Dynasty” by Taylor Swift. I really like the story behind the girl the song is about.
For reference:
She references the track “the last great american dynasty” specifically when she writes about “a misfit widow getting gleeful revenge on the town that cast her out.”
The “Rebekah” Swift chronicles in “the last great american dynasty” is Rebekah Harkness, a St. Louis heiress and divorcée who married William “Bill” Hale Harkness. According to The New York Times, Swift’s lyrics about Rebekah’s life and love with Bill are historically accurate. “Bill was the heir to the Standard Oil name and money, and the town said, ‘How did a middle-class divorcée do it?’” Swift sings. “They picked out a home and called it Holiday House, their parties were tasteful if a little loud / The doctor had told him to settle down, it must have been her fault his heart gave out.” Per the Times, Rebekah was born in 1915 to a “rich, emotionally frigid St. Louis family.” She married Bill, whose family was heir to the Standard Oil fortune, after a failed union with photographer W. Dickinson Pierce. Her husband died in 1954 of a heart attack.
In the years after his death, Rebekah did in fact have “a marvelous time ruining everything,” as Swift suggests in the lyrics. As reported by the Times, Rebekah renovated the Rhode Island home she shared with Bill to install eight additional kitchens and 21 bathrooms. In “the last great american dynasty,” Swift sings that Rebekah “filled the pool with champagne” and dyed a neighbor’s dog “key lime green.” In reality, the Times says Rebekah in fact “cleaned her pool out with Dom Perignon” and dyed a cat green instead.
Fascinating details that didn’t make the song, per the Times: “She moved hundreds of thousands of dollars from one bank to another for the pleasure of confusing her accountants. She believed in reincarnation. She filled her fish tank with goldfish and Scotch.” (Where is the HBO biopic about this woman?!)
by LocalCompostbin
1 Comment
Perhaps {{Margaret the First by Danielle Dutton}} may be up your alley. Based on a real life woman from the 17th century who was a bit different from her contemporaries.