Brilliant Disguise

"A double helix of a memoir that intertwines a life in the rock 'n' roll hothouse of late 70s New York with a deeply personal account of a tragic sibling, Brilliant Disguise is a moving portrait of innocence and experience." -Joe Hagan, author of Sticky Fingers: The Life & Times of Jann Wenner and Rolling Stone Magazine

"Brilliant Disguise does what every good memoir should: it shows how our personal journeys help shape the world around us while that world, in turn, helps shape the direction of our lives. The story-set against the fascinating soundscape of New York's rock music scene in the 1970s-is honest and profound." -Pam Fessler, former national correspondent for NPR and author of Carville's Cure: Leprosy, Stigma, and the Fight for Justice.

After their nuclear family exploded into a vaporous mushroom cloud, the two siblings could only duck and cover. The young Susan basked in her brother Robert's glow. Teachers singled her out because, certainly, the little sister would excel too. But how could she ever reach their expectations? Instead, she rebelled, chose the wrong men, drank and took drugs.

Susan talked her way into a job at Rolling Stone magazine in 1976. Three years later, as an organizer of five nights of No Nukes concerts at Madison Square Garden with Bruce Springsteen, Bonnie Raitt, and many others, she got snared in the rock politics scramble and her brother saved her. Many years later, though, she could not save him.

Only in retrospect can Susan piece together how Robert's too-brief life was a brilliant disguise. Traumatized by their childhood experience, he buried his pain behind an outsized personality. On his twelfth wedding anniversary in 1990, he ended his life. Brilliant Disguise winds together Susan's rock-and-roll odyssey with an exploration of Robert's life, teasing out clues as to why the past so dangerously swamped him.