From the Bookshelf of Clifton Public Library…

[close] Alexandra Aldrich, a direct descendant of the famous Astor dynasty, grew up in the servants quarters of Rokeby, the forty-three-room Hudson Valley mansion built by her ancestors. Reaching back to the Gilded Age, when that legacy first began to come undone, Alexandra has written an unflinching, mordantly funny account of neglect and class anxiety amid the ruins of a once prominent family.