In Their Own Words: The Best Tell-All Books Written By The Socially Elite

Gloria Vanderbilt, A Mother's Story

In 1988, Gloria Vanderbilt watched her 23-year-old son Carter leap from their fourteenth-floor Manhattan terrace. "He let go," Gloria says, and her memoir recounts a grieving mother's struggle to come to terms with her son's death. Full of sorrow and wisdom, A Mother's Story reveals the cracks behind an heiress' gilded mirror, telling the story of a woman abandoned by her own mother at an early age, a person trying to become whole again after experiencing so much loss. A Mother's Story, by Gloria Vanderbilt.  Plume Publishing, May 1, 1997. [Photo via]