American Empress is a sweeping history of the dramatic life of heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post, daughter of breakfast-cereal magnate C. W. Post. As a young girl growing up in the Midwest, Marjorie Post helped glue cereal boxes in her father's barn, later became a board member of his company, wed a diplomat and by late middle age was widely acknowledged as the unofficial "Queen of Washington, D.C." The glamorous and warm-hearted Mrs. Post was also mother to actress Dina Merrill. Throughout her life, she gave generously to hundreds of civic, artistic and philanthropic causes, among which were the National Symphony Orchestra, the Washington Ballet and the Kennedy Center. By virtue of her brains, beauty and great wealth, Mrs. Post was a woman well ahead of her era, whose natural business acumen created the frozen foods industry and transformed the Postum Cereal Company into the General Foods Corporation.
As a nine-year old growing up in suburban Boston, Nancy wrote her first "book" about her mischievous dog and friends. "Being a red-head meant I was teased a lot," Nancy recalls. "I still wonder if that sense of being different impelled me to become a writer because I felt myself an outsider, an observer of others."
While raising her own children two decades later, Nancy became a stringer for the New York Times and won a scholarship to the Breadloaf Writers Conference. Those experiences sparked her first nonfiction book, THE NEW SUBURBAN WOMAN, followed by THE MOTHER MIRROR, ISABELLA OF CASTILE (a Book-of-the Month Featured Dividend) and the best-selling biography of Majorie Merriweather Post,AMERICAN EMPRESS.
Subsequent to writing several award-wining series for television, Nancy published the THE RELUCTANT SPIRITUALIST in 2005, a dramatic story about the origins of American spiritualism.
Her fascination with history led to research about Mercy Otis Warren, America's first female playwright and historian, for which Nancy won a fellowship to the American Antiquarian Society. In 2008 Beacon Press published that work, the award-winning THE MUSE OF THE REVOLUTION which appeared in paperback in 2009.
A seasoned speaker who appeared on C-Span's BookTV in 2008 and 2009, Nancy is writing a new book and serves as the director of the Cape Cod Writers Center Conference. She enjoys spending time with her husband and family, friends, gardening, historical preservation, dancing and the cultural life of Boston and Manhattan.
