For readers drawn to the gilded intrigue of Vanderbilt and The Last Castle, this forthcoming biography uncovers the hidden life of Alice Delamar—an heiress who quietly shaped twentieth-century culture while fiercely guarding her privacy.
In 1918, at just twenty-three, Alice Antoinette Delamar inherited her father’s vast mining fortune, reportedly becoming one of the wealthiest women of her time—and almost immediately, one of the most scrutinized. The press wanted answers: Would she take over her father’s estate? How would she spend her money? And, most insistently, whom would she marry?
Rather than step into society’s spotlight, she retreated behind the gates of secluded, tree-covered estates, creating private worlds where artists, writers, dancers, and visionaries gathered far from scrutiny. She built Stonebrook, her secluded estate in Weston, Connecticut, a wooded refuge where creativity flourished beyond the reach of society pages. She also maintained residences in Palm Beach, Paris, and New York City, dividing her life among places that offered both beauty and anonymity. Within these carefully guarded worlds, Delamar became an unlikely fairy godmother to twentieth-century artists—hosting, supporting, and protecting figures such as Vladimir Nabokov, Salvador Dalí, George Balanchine, Ludwig Bemelmans, Isamu Noguchi, and Eva Le Gallienne. Entry into her orbit required loyalty and discretion; exile, when it came, was often sudden and final.
After encountering Delamar as a tantalizing aside in a biography of La Gallienne, Nona Footz was captivated. Who was this woman who appeared everywhere and nowhere at once—and what was she hiding? Footz spent the next decade following Delamar’s trail through archives, attics, and farflung cities, searching for a rumored manuscript and listening closely to the memories of those who had once belonged to Delamar’s inner circle.
What emerged is both a richly detailed portrait of a reclusive millionairess and a meditation on legacy itself—on how the dead continue to shape the living, and how secrets, carefully kept, echo across generations.
A Mansion of Her Own arrives this October—just in time for long evenings, layered histories, and the pleasure of uncovering a life lived deliberately out of view and we can’t wait to read it.
