As one reviewer here has noted, this is not a traditional narrative but an oral history. It starts with the murder of Barbara Baekeland by her son then goes back in time to beginnings of the Baekeland fortune through the passionate but ill-fated marriage of Brooks and Barbara until it catches up with the murder and the sad denouement of Tony's life. This is the rare book that proved even better than I remembered when I reread it last month. I was that grateful not to have had Brooks and Barbara Baekeland for parents. After reading this book, I promptly wrote my parents a nice letter about what swell people they were. I was in high school and like many teenagers I was prepared to see parents as the source of most teenage troubles. It starts with the murder of Barbara Baekeland by her son the I first read this book when it originally came out. I first read this book when it originally came out. Yes, it does get a bit repetitive in the middle and about 2/3 of the way through but the last one hundred and fifty pages are practically relentless. Also, it grounds the reader in the story's circumstances and largely explains the participants' actions. Though it seems to reveal and conceal its subject matter almost simulatenously, its "told first hand" stance gives the it the ring of truth (whether it is or not) and gives the reader much more insight to the players that a straightforward journalistic report would. Reading SAVAGE GRACE is like rubbernecking a 16 limousine pile up on the road en route to the Hamptons-you really want to get a good look inside to see if anyone rich and/or famous is inside the wreckage, you feel ashamed for wanting to see elite blood and guts spilled and yet you can't drive on! Robins' usuage of multiple interviews and research materials (published articles, stories, novels, lectures as well as letters and diaries) gives the reader a continually tantalizing view of a world th Reading SAVAGE GRACE is like rubbernecking a 16 limousine pile up on the road en route to the Hamptons-you really want to get a good look inside to see if anyone rich and/or famous is inside the wreckage, you feel ashamed for wanting to see elite blood and guts spilled and yet you can't drive on! Robins' usuage of multiple interviews and research materials (published articles, stories, novels, lectures as well as letters and diaries) gives the reader a continually tantalizing view of a world they otherwise would never glimpse and perhaps is the only way the story could be told since so little of it could be related by conventional reportage and there is little in concrete evidence. A true-crime classic, it exposes the envied lives of the rich and beautiful, and brilliantly illuminates the darkest corners of the American Dream. Savage Grace unfolds against a glamorous international background (New York, London, Paris, Italy, Spain) features a nonpareil cast of characters (including Salvador Dalí, James Jones, the Astors, the Vanderbilts, and European nobility) and tells the doomed Baekelands' story through remarkably candid interviews, private letters, and diaries, not to mention confidential hospital, State Department, and prison documents. Savage Grace unfolds against a glamorous international b Alternately neglected and smothered by his parents, he was finally driven to destroy the whole family in a violent chain of events. A spellbinding tale of money and madness, incest and matricide, Savage Grace is the saga of Brooks and Barbara Baekeland beautiful, rich, worldly and their handsome, gentle son, Tony.