List Price: $11.95

Tags: Gay & Lesbian, History,

Book Description:
Winner of the Somerset Maugham Award and a London Times bestseller, The Queen of Whale Cay is a marvelous portrait of one of the twentieth century's great eccentrics. When Marion "Joe" Carstairs died in 1993 at the age of ninety-three, she was largely forgotten. During the 1920s she held the world record as the fastest female speedboat racer. But as journalist Kate Summerscale discovered, when researching an obituary for the Daily Telegraph, Carstairs was also a notorious crossdresser who favored women and smoked cheroots. Supremely self-confident, she inherited a Standard Oil fortune and knew how to spend her money--on fast boats and cars, on her female lovers, and on a Caribbean Island, Whale Cay, where she reigned over a colony of Bahamians. There, far from her bohemian past in London and Paris, Carstairs hosted a succession of girlfriends and celebrities, including Marlene Dietrich and the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. Through it all, she remained devoted to Lord Todd Wadley, a little doll who was her bosom companion until the very end. "A small jewel of a biography." --The New Yorker "Riveting . . . reads like a fastpaced, truelife adventure. . . . A personal, intimate portrait of an outrageous, oddly admirable woman." --San Francisco Chronicle "Fun and funny. . . Summerscale tells her story with an affectionate, knowing eye . . . in a narrative style that captures the tone and spirit of Carstairs' times." --The Boston Globe