The Last Madam

the long version

"Sexy, shrewd Norma Wallace ran the last of the legendary houses of prostitution in the French Quarter of New Orleans. Two years before her death in 1974, she began to tape-record her memories - the salacious stories of a smart, glamorous, powerful woman whose scandalous life made front-page headlines, and whose husbands and lovers ran the gamut from movie stars to gangsters to the boy next door, thirty-nine years her junior, who became her fifth and final husband."--BOOK JACKET. "Christine Wiltz's The Last Madam is a chronicle of Norma's rise from a life of poverty to that of a wealthy grande dame - a New Orleans legend with powerful political connections who was given the keys to the city. She answered to no one, and surrendered only to an irrational, obsessive love, which ultimately led to her surprising and violent death. This is also the story of New Orleans over five decades, a story thick with the vice and corruption that flourished in the city's steamy Old World atmosphere."--BOOK JACKET.