Born into a celebrated Anglo-Irish family, the Guinnesses, Ivana Lowell tells of coming to terms with her blue-blood heritage and her own childhood traumas. This is also the story of her intense relationship with her complicated mother, writer Caroline Blackwood. A keen observer with a wicked sense of humor and no self-pity, Lowell sets scenes with an almost madcap cast of characters, introducing us to such eccentrics as her grandmother, the Marchioness of Dufferin and Ava. She takes us from the marchioness's annual ball for her old friend, the Queen Mother, to her stately Irish home, to summers in Sardinia; through moves to carelessly furnished, too-large English country houses with her mother and stepfather, the poet Robert Lowell; to working in Manhattan at Miramax Books; to her wedding at New York's Rainbow Room and finally to a life with her daughter. Ivana also has darker stories to tell including her own stints in rehab, and discovering, after her mother's death, the secret Lady Caroline had successfully kept from her.