Duncan Pollock

The Rubicam Women Duncan Pollock

The exuberant 1920s gave rise to advertising pioneer Raymond Rubicam and his ambitious café society wife, who posed in London with her three young daughters for a titled English painter. The society portrait, which the author inherited from his mother, one of the sitters, captures a family of apparent ease, affluence and gracious manners. Yet the artist subtly undermines this serenity and hints at the mental anguish just beneath the surface. In this moving memoir, the author carries us along on his journey to uncover the mystery behind this picture and the genetic disposition that threads its insidious way down from his grandmother's line to strike all three daughters, and plant its venom in many of their children and children's children as well. What emerges from this scene of serenity is a picture of tragic and devastating consequences, with suffering and redemption, all set against the rise of New York's media driven commercial culture and the author's quest to understand why his own early life took the course it did.