This week a fun, interesting, warm conversation with author and fellow podcaster Fern Bernstein. 2019 saw her debut memoir Mah Jongg Mondays: a memoir about friendship, love and faith. And this past October her second book Staunch: The Edies of Grey Gardens. Fern hosts the podcasts Mah Jongg Mondays and Grey Gardens: Don’t Just Be A Lady…Be A Legend.
Brought to America in the 1920s by an American who had been living in Shanghai, Mah Jongg became the rage of the roaring 1920s for both men and women. And that same era is when Grey Gardens’ story begins. Big Edie and Little Edie, Edith Ewing Bouvier Beale, and her daughter. It’s the story of two women who did not follow the conventions of the time. Two staunch women who lived live on their own terms. A riches-to-rags story. And the sisterhood of family who tried to help them, Jackie Onassis and Princess Less Radziwill.