Peaches & Daddy: A Story of the Roaring 20s, the Birth of Tabloid Media, & the Courtship that Captured the Heart and Imagination of the American Public

By: Michael M. Greenburg

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Synopsis: A “lively, intelligently rendered account” of a tabloid romance, scandalous divorce and the rise of yellow journalism in Gilded Age New York (Kirkus Reviews). Edward “Daddy” Browning was a famously eccentric millionaire when he crossed paths with fifteen-year-old shop clerk and aspiring flapper Frances Heenan at the Hotel McAlpin. Frances reminded Daddy of peaches and cream—and a scandalous romance began. Thirty-seven days later, amid headlines announcing the event and with the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children in close pursuit, Peaches and Daddy were married. Within ten months they would begin a courtroom drama that would blow their impassioned saga into a national scandal. Peaches & Daddy vividly recounts the amazing and improbable romance, marriage, and ultimate legal battle for separation of this publicity-craving Manhattan couple in America’s “Era of Wonderful Nonsense.” Their story is one of dysfunction and remarkable excess; yet at the time, the lurid details of their brief courtship and marriage captured the imagination of the American public like no other story of its day.