The heartbreaking, never-before-told story of Hollywood icon Natalie Wood’s glamorous life, sudden death, and lasting legacy, written by her daughter, Natasha Gregson Wagner.
More Than Love is a memoir of loss, grief, and coming-of-age by a daughter of Hollywood royalty. Natasha Gregson Wagner’s mother, Natalie Wood, was a child actress who became a legendary movie star, the dark-haired beauty of Splendor in the Grass, Rebel Without a Cause, and West Side Story. She and Natasha’s stepfather, the actor Robert Wagner, were a Hollywood it-couple twice over, first in the 1950s, and then again when they remarried in the 70s.
But Natalie’s sudden death by drowning off Catalina Island at the age of forty-three devastated her family, made her stepfather a person of interest, and turned a vibrant wife, mother, and actress into a tragic figure. The events of that weekend have long been a mystery, and despite the rumors, scandalous media coverage, and accusations of wrongdoing, there has never been an account of how the tragedy was experienced by her daughter. For the first time Natasha addresses the questions surrounding that night to clear her beloved stepfather’s name.
More Than Love begins on the morning after her mother’s death in November 1981 when eleven-year-old Natasha hears the news on the radio that her mother’s body has been found off the coast of Catalina after her parents had spent the weekend on the family boat, The Splendour.
From this profound and shattering loss, Natasha shares her memories of her earliest bonds with her mother; her warm, loving, and slightly chaotic childhood as the daughter of two stars; the lost and confused years of her adolescence; and her halting attempts to move forward as a young woman.
Beautifully told, More Than Love is an emotionally powerful tale of a daughter coming to terms with her grief, as well as a riveting portrait of a famous mother and a vanished Hollywood.
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“In this wrenching memoir, Natasha Gregson Wagner conjures in precise, dreamlike detail the idyllic, protected childhood that her mother, Natalie Wood, created for her…Writing from inside an experience long crystallized as Hollywood lore and sometimes as Hollywood scandal, Wagner deftly redirects us to the true mystery, that of the deep and enduring bond she shares with her namesake.”
— Dana Goodyear, author of The Oracle of Hollywood Boulevard
“Natasha Gregson Wagner brings to life her extraordinarily talented and devoted movie-star mother, Natalie Wood, their magical life before Natalie’s tragic drowning when Natasha was eleven, and Natasha’s struggle to grow up after. The book is moving, powerful, and so honest. Natasha Gregson Wagner is a bright life force as was her mother.”
— Delia Ephron, New York Times bestselling authorBe the first to write a review about this audiobook!
Natasha Gregson Wagner has acted in such films as Another Day in Paradise, High Fidelity, Two Girls and a Guy, and David Lynch’s Lost Highway, and she has received acclaim for her stage work and television appearances in Ally McBeal, House MD, and Chicago Hope. She is one of the producers of an HBO documentary of her mother’s life: What Remains Behind.