Anne Morrow Lindbergh : Her Life [Hardcover]

Susan Hertog (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 1, 1999

"A superb debut. With uncommon grace and poetic sensitivity, Susan Hertog has captured both the transcendent beauty and profound sorrow of a remarkable woman's struggle to find her place in the world. Whether soaring in the sky or deep in mourning, Anne Morrow Lindbergh comes vividly to life in this poignant, haunting, and lyrical work."
--Ron Chernow,
Author of Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr.


In this first full-length study of Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Susan Hertog pierces the public image of Anne and Charles to reveal their story from inside the marriage, and gives us a true understanding of the author of the bestselling classic The Gift from the Sea. While biographies of Charles Lindbergh have captured his spirit as the twentieth century's first international celebrity, Susan Hertog plumbs the depths of Anne Lindbergh's search for her own identity and vision as she struggles to remain faithful to her marriage and to motherhood.

Anne Morrow, the daughter of the American ambassador to Mexico, came of age in the rarefied society of international business and politics. Shy and sensitive, yet rebellious and ambitious, she cultivated her independence and creativity at Smith College. In 1929, at the age of twenty-three, she married the already famous aviator Colonel Charles A. Lindbergh. Charles was the mirror to Anne's own ambition and her way out of a conventional straitlaced home. As hungry for life and adventurous as he, she harnessed his fame and his courage to become a groundbreaking aviator and writer. The tragic kidnapping and murder of their infant son became the price Anne paid for her marriage to a hero, and the catalyst for her passionate commitment to her family and to her work.

Illuminated by nearly five years of interviews with Anne Morrow Lindbergh, this book offers valuable insights into her thoughts on her life and writing. And it is the work that may finally unravel the mystery of Charles Lindbergh's entanglements in the German Reich, which threatened to destroy Charles and Anne's faltering marriage.

Anne Morrow Lindbergh is not only the story of a brilliant writer who probed the heart of womanhood, it is the anatomy of a marriage--the journey of a young bride who overcame the pressures of fame, personal tragedy, and social constraint to find answers that continue to illuminate the lives of women today.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Susan Hertog managed to obtain 10 separate interviews with her very private subject (though not access to Anne Morrow Lindbergh's unpublished papers), and her personal involvement shows in every line of this impassioned biography. Hertog's searching account of the Lindbergh marriage explores the complex union of two people who loved each other deeply yet were emotionally ill-suited. Charles "saw the rebel heart inside the timid girl" and liberated a confined daughter of privilege into a world of adventure, but "[the] price she paid for her Prince" was high, including painful loneliness during his frequent absences and, most agonizingly, the 1932 death of their baby son. Though he was killed by kidnappers, in the Lindberghs' view he was equally a victim of the relentless publicity surrounding them. As the couple withdrew to protect their other children, Anne experienced a sense of isolation, but she was also liberated to explore her inner life and to delineate it in her writing--which was always supported by Charles. Hertog, who read Gift from the Sea (1955) as a new mother without knowing anything about its author, enthusiastically assesses that bestseller and other books in which Anne asserted that "a woman must come of age by herself," reminding readers that Anne Morrow Lindbergh is not the wife of a famous aviator, but a source of inspiration in her own right. --Wendy Smith

From Publishers Weekly

"My life began when I met Charles Lindbergh," wrote Anne Morrow Lindbergh. As a reserved Smith College junior who harbored the ambition to become a writer, she met her future husband in 1927, soon after he became the first pilot to fly solo across the Atlantic. Raised in a privileged yet conventional environment as the daughter of Dwight Morrow, the American ambassador to Mexico, Anne embarked on a life of adventure with Lindbergh, although she soon recognized the difficulty of reconciling her literary ambitions with accompanying her husband as copilot, navigator and radio operator. After the tragic kidnapping and death of their first child, which they blamed in part on dogged press coverage of their personal life, the Lindberghs moved abroad. They became embroiled with the leaders of Nazi Germany, according to Hertog, because Charles believed that the democratic system was weak and ineffectual, as evidenced by the unbridled freedom of the press. Hertog contends that, although she was not as convinced as her husband of the integrity of the Nazi cause, Anne publicly supported him out of wifely loyalty. On their return to the U.S. and with her husband's encouragement, Anne launched a successful literary career, publishing memoirs, poetry and chronicles of her aerial adventures. Although not as exhaustive as Scott Berg's Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of Charles, this sympathetic portrayal of Anne as a wife, mother, poet and feminist may well find a readership more interested in a talented woman's creative struggle than in the oft-told Lindbergh story. Photos not seen by PW. Agent, Georges Borchardt; BOMC selection; 6-city author tour. (Dec.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 576 pages
• Publisher: Nan A. Talese; 1st edition (December 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 038546973X
• ISBN-13: 978-0385469739
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.5 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (27 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #286,811 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #8 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > People, A-Z > ( L ) > Lindbergh, Charles

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

30 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Fascinating autionary Biography Of Anne Morrow Lindbergh!, August 19, 2000

By 

Barron Laycock "Labradorman" (Temple, New Hampshire United States) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Anne Morrow Lindbergh : Her Life (Hardcover)

This book is a wonderful reminder of just how remarkable a woman the long-suffering Anne Morrow Lindbergh was in her own right, and of the difficult time she had emerging from the extremely dark shadows of husband Charles Lindbergh life of accomplishment, aggravation, and pathetic self-absorption. In this literate and quite readable biography by Susan Hertog, a portrait of this singular woman comes soaring to the heights despite of life of incredible personal hardship and sorrow. It is also a sad reminder that into each life rain must fall, regardless of how affluent, famous, or privileged.

It is a common place by this point in our history that Anne Morrow Lindbergh was a victim of colossal proportions, not only in terms of the controversial and shocking kidnapping and death of her infant son in the early 1930s, but also by her domination for decades by "Lucky Lindy", and she was trapped by convention and circumstance into an incredibly difficult life with this brilliant but strangely detached human being she was married to. From the moment they met her life was destined to trail in the shadow of his, both by virtue of tradition and her own desire to have a predominantly private life. Yet, curiously, she ironically married the man most singularly unable to give her all that she wanted and needed. Their life together is a somber and complicated modern American tragedy on the scale of "Death of a Salesman".

Yet Anne Morrow Lindbergh rose above her situation and their personal life of tragedy and disappointment. Lindbergh was a peripatetic traveler, and while she often accompanied him (indeed, he insisted in order to keep her primary focus exclusively on him rather than on their children or anything else), in their later years they came to live increasingly more separate and distinct lives, even while together. To say Lindbergh was a bizarre man and a strange soul is to be kind to a man described in pitiless terms by his widow herself and his adult child. It is easy for younger readers ignorant of how difficult and scandalous divorce or separation would have been for her, it may seem difficult to understand why she stayed with him despite his cruelty, indifference, and prejudices all those years. But for older readers more familiar with the older and more common character virtues people of Mrs. Lindbergh's generation, social background, and time subscribed to, it is a tragic set of circumstances that only she can understand in all its tragic overtones.

This is a close up portrait of a woman tragically trapped by fame, marriage, and social convention into a life of limitless advantages but cruelly wasted opportunities. That she was as successful as an author, humanitarian, social activist and early feminist later in her life is a tribute to a remarkable woman, and yet a bittersweet reminder of how much more she might have been had she never met her future husband. This is a interesting, well written, and captivating study of a woman and her times, and is one I recommend to people interested in a most fascinating yet offbeat biography. Enjoy!

26 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Fan of Anne, December 16, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Anne Morrow Lindbergh : Her Life (Hardcover)

With three pilots in my family, it was hard not to know the story of Charles and Anne Lindbergh. I read Anne's incredible Gift from the Sea when I was fifteen years old, and since then-becoming a flyer, wife, mother and writer myself-I've gobbled up every book and article available. None has captured the essence of this daring, captivating woman the way Susan Hertog's biography has. The author's empathy for her subject put me in the cockpit with Lindy during their first flight together and held me in Anne's seat through the romance, tragedy, struggle and catharsis that followed. When Anne finally accomplishes Gift from the Sea, every experience up to that moment makes sense. It is utterly inspirational. But Hertog somehow holds on to scholarship, and goes on to examine a life fraught with controversy. Enough authors have skirted the issue or apologized for the Lindberghs' unconscionable endorsement of WWII appeasement and pro-Nazi sentiments. Susan Hertog seems to be the first biographer to speak freely and cogently on the most delicate issues. For that reason, this thorough, level-headed study demonstrates the highest end of what an independent, "unauthorized" biography can accomplish. Her voluminous research (including a family tree that must have dazzled even the family) is a sturdy foundation for her wonderful, lively prose. It is overwhelming to digest such a remarkable life in just a few days. Susan Hertog does not make it easy, or simple, but she does make it immensely satisfying.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent analysis of Anne Morrow Lindbergh, December 9, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Anne Morrow Lindbergh: Her Life (Paperback)

I have read all of AML's books, as well as the recent biographies by F. Scott Berg, Joyce Milton, Dorothy Hermann, and Reeve Lindbergh. Susan Hertog was able to uncover subtleties in AML's character that the other authors missed. She rightly praises AML's gifted, lyrical method of writing, but also very gently exposes her life-long "victim complex" that would have been healthy for a certain amount of time after the kidnapping, but unfortunately lasted for the rest of her life. The best example is a quote by her friend Ernestine Stodelle on page 426.

Susan Hertog's book is the best and most comprehensive analysis of AML that I have read so far. She was also able to print a few photos that were not in any of the previous books, showing AML to be a great beauty throughout her life, particularly directly after her marriage. While Scott Berg's captured the essence of Charles Lindbergh, I think he felt so loyal to AML because she was the one who granted him access to all of the Lindbergh papers, so his portrait of her was through rose colored glasses.

Susan Hertog has done neither a hatchet job nor puff piece. She truly understands this complex woman and after being an admirer of AML for many years I finally had a sense of satisfaction that I really understood her after reading this book.